f    LIBRARY 

I         UNIVERSITY  OF 

cr-[  irni?NV. 
SAN  OKT,f> 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBKWI 
SITY  6F  CALIFORNIA, 
U  JWAJL*. 


TWO    LECTURES 

ON    THE 
SCIENCE    OF    LANGUAGE 


SonDon:    C.   J.   CLAY  AND  SONS, 
CAMBRIDGE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS   WAREHOUSE, 

AYE    MARIA    LANE. 
©(assom:   50,  WELLINGTON  STREET. 


{All  Rights  reserved} 


TWO    LECTURES 

ON    THE 

SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE 


by 
JAMES  HOPE  MOULTON,  M.A.,  D.LiT.  (LOND.) 

Late  Fellow  of  King's  College,  Cambridge, 

Tutor  at  the  Didsbury  Theological  College,  Manchester, 

Late  Senior  Classical  Master  at  The  Leys  School,  Cambridge. 


Cambridge 
at  the   University   Press 

1903 


PRINTED    BY   J.    AND    C.    F.    CLAY, 
AT   THE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS. 


lOjANNI    PEILE,   Litt.D. 
TP04>EIA 


PREFACE. 

^"VHIS  little  book  consists  of  two  lectures  delivered 
on  August  1 9th  and  2Oth,  1902,  to  students  of  the 
University  Extension  at  Cambridge.  In  deference  to 
the  kindly  expressed  wish  of  many  in  my  audience, 
and  in  view  of  the  non-existence  (so  far  as  I  know)  of 
anything  in  English  giving  a  purely  popular  intro- 
duction to  the  Science  of  Language  in  its  latest 
developments,  I  ventured  to  offer  the  lectures  to  the 
University  Press  for  publication,  hoping  that  they 
misjht  serve  to  stimulate  interest  in  a  most  fascinating 

o  o 

study,  sadly  neglected  in  this  country.  I  was  en- 
couraged in  this  resolution  by  my  friend  Professor 
Ridgeway,  who  very  kindly  read  the  lectures  in  MS. 
and  helped  me  with  many  suggestions.  The  first 
lecture  is  printed  nearly  as  delivered ;  the  second, 
which  was  given  extempore,  was  written  out  im- 
mediately after,  and  follows  the  general  lines  of  my 
notes.  I  have  added  a  brief  Bibliography  for  those 


viii  Preface 

who  may  be  tempted  to  pursue  the  study.  It  seemed 
best  to  preserve  the  lecture  form,  which  to  some 
extent  mitigates  the  apparent  absurdity  of  putting 
such  a  title  as  "The  Science  of  Language"  over  a 
booklet  of  fifty  or  sixty  pages.  There  are  many 
things  here  which  would  be  out  of  place  in  a  scientific 
summary  :  there  are  many  things  absent  which  even 
an  article  for  a  small  encyclopaedia  ought  to  contain. 
Popular  lectures  will  only  be  expected  to  include 
what  will  rouse  interest  and  lead  to  further  reading. 
As  such  I  venture  to  put  forth  what  is  almost  the 
only  published  product  of  my  sixteen  years'  teaching 
in  Cambridge,  so  far  as  the  general  subject  is  con- 
cerned. Writing  from  a  new  sphere,  where  Hellenistic 
Greek  will  claim  yet  more  rigorously  the  time  that 
might  have  been  given  to  Comparative  Philology, 
I  feel  as  if  I  were  hanging  a  votiva  tabula  in  the  temple 
of  Aius  Locutius — if  that  shadowy  divinity  may  be 
persuaded  to  take  under  his  patronage  a  subject  so 
clearly  appropriate  to  him. 

It  only  remains  to  express  my  gratitude  to  some 
of  my  old  Cambridge  friends  for  obligations  very 
deeply  felt.  The  Master  of  Christ's,  who  has  kindly 
allowed  me  to  inscribe  these  lectures  to  him,  was  the 
teacher  to  whom,  in  undergraduate  days,  I  owed  my 
introduction  to  the  "New  Grammarians,"  then  very 


Preface  ix 

new.  Aius  Locutius  has  long  received  Dr  Peile's 
votive  tablet,  to  the  sincere  regret  of  all  his  old  pupils, 
who  will  not  forget  the  lucidity,  wide  knowledge,  and 
unfailing  judgment  which  always  informed  his  lec- 
tures. His  successor  in  the  Readership  of  Comparative 
Philology,  Mr  Giles,  has  most  kindly  read  my  proofs 
and  helped  me  with  a  number  of  suggestions.  His 
learning  and  acuteness  have  been  an  invaluable  help 
to  me,  as  most  of  my  pages  would  show  if  space 
permitted  separate  mention  of  the  modifications  due 
to  his  criticism.  I  need  not  say,  however,  that  the 
responsibility  for  statements  made  here  remains 
wholly  my  own.  I  have  also  been  helped,  not  for 
the  first  time,  by  my  old  friend  and  colleague,  Mr 
E.  E.  Kellctt,  of  The  Leys,  who  has  carefully  read 
the  proofs.  The  last  acknowledgement,  alas  !  is  one 
which  its  recipient  is  no  longer  here  to  see.  Professor 
Cowell,  with  whom  I  had  the  privilege  of  reading  for 
a  short  time  in  Sanskrit,  and  for  some  fifteen  years  in 
Zend,  leaves  a  venerated  memory  behind  for  all  who 
received  out  of  his  boundless  stores.  What  he  knew 
not  was  not  knowledge,  in  Aryan  subjects  certainly, 
and  in  many  other  fields  ;  but  his  pupils  always  had 
to  struggle  with  the  impression  that  they  were  there 
really  to  impart  information  to  him.  The  man  in 
the  street  knows  of  him  as  the  "  onlie  begetter "  of 


x  Preface 

Fitzgerald's  Omar.  Happily  there  are  scholars  enough 
left  to  preserve  in  grateful  memory  more  solid  titles 
to  the  fame  of  the  greatest  English  Orientalist  of  his 
time. 

I  should  like  to  have  named  in  closing  at  least 
two  other  great  scholars  whose  friendship,  though 
their  work  lies  in  very  different  fields,  has  been  a 
powerful  stimulus  to  me.  But  since  their  influence 
on  this  little  book  is  only  indirect,  it  seems  hardly 
fair  to  make  them  apparent  contributories.  I  must 
be  content  with  merging  these  debts  in  the  com- 
prehensive acknowledgement  to  the  genius  loci,  whose 
influence  is  realised  most  keenly  when  a  long  resi- 
dence in  Cambridge  is  just  closed.  I  would  that 
my  parting  tribute  were  worthier  of  the  shrine. 


J.   H.  M. 


DlDSBURY, 

March,  1903. 


I.     THE    SCIENCE    OF    LANGUAGE. 

THERE  are  very  few  sciences  for  which  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  did  as  much  as  it  did  for  the  Science 
of  Language.  It  is  indeed  a  question  whether  there 
was  such  a  thing  as  a  science  of  language  till  the  eve 
of  the  "  Wonderful  Century/'  unless  the  stage  of  rudi- 
mentary guesswork  in  which  this  like  other  sciences 
began  is  to  be  called  "science"  by  anticipation.  In 
the  eighteenth  century  etymology  was  defined  as  a 
science  in  which  the  vowels  mattered  nothing  at  all, 
and  the  consonants  very  little.  Now,  we  are  no  longer 
allowed  to  indulge  in  wild  guesses  when  we  seek  the 
history  of  a  familiar  word.  We  have  to  bind  our- 
selves rigidly  within  the  laws  of  an  exact  scientific 
method,  and  the  science  is  the  more  complicated  and 
exacting  in  that  it  cannot  confine  itself  to  mechanical 
processes  which  may  be  measured  and  analysed  like 
those  of  chemical  or  astronomical  phenomena.  The 
Science  of  Language,  as  established  by  the  labours  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  combines  the  methods  of  the 
natural  and  the  moral  sciences.  On  one  side  it  deals 


2  The  Science 

with  a  purely  natural  evolution,  on  the  other  it  studies 
the  workings  of  the  human  mind,  which  crosses  the 
stream  of  mechanical  development  and  imperiously 
turns  it  in  directions  which  only  the  psychologist  can 
reduce  to  rule. 

Perhaps  I  have  said  enough  to  suggest  that  the 
Science  of  Language  has  a  peculiar  value  as  an 
educating  force.  It  may  be  fairly  claimed  that  it 
combines  all  the  elements  which  are  most  necessary 
for  a  really  perfect  educator.  It  is  a  science,  and  it 
demands  in  the  highest  degree  those  methods  of 
exactness,  of  rigid  investigation  of  facts  and  collection 
of  material,  of  precise  and  logical  deduction,  which  we 
associate  with  the  physical  sciences.  But  at  the  same 
time  it  takes  its  material  very  largely  from  literary 
sources  ;  and  even  where  it  deals  with  colloquial  idiom 
or  non-literary  dialects,  the  careful  analysis  of  the 
forms  of  speech  cannot  avoid  the  constant  application 
of  principles  which  form  the  very  basis  of  literary 
composition.  Our  science  therefore  lies  on  both  sides 
of  the  frontier  which  divides  the  two  great  fields  of 
human  study,  and  it  is  admirably  adapted  to  correct 
the  narrowness  which  is  often  seen  in  those  whose 
training  is  purely  literary  or  purely  scientific. 

The  side  of  our  science  which  presents  itself  to  the 
ordinary  educated  person  is  Etymology.  No  one  can 
fail  to  feel  interested  by  a  dip  into  a  dictionary,  which 
tells  us  by  what  devious  and  lengthy  paths  words 
have  come  to  the  meanings  and  forms  they  now  show. 
The  dictionary  of  course  only  gives  us  results,  which 


may  stimulate  us  to  seek  for  processes  to  establish 
conclusions  often  paradoxical.  When  we  are  told 
that  Easter  is  akin  to  the  Latin  Aurora,  and  uncouth 
to  ingens,  that  sooth,  (prc)scnt  and  suttee  all  come  from 
the  participle  of  the  verb  "  to  be  "  as  it  shows  itself  in 
three  cognate  languages,  with  onto(logy)  depending  on 
a  corresponding  form  in  a  fourth,  we  are  easily  con- 
vinced that  the  ways  of  words  arc  peculiar.  And  when 
we  trace  the  development  of  a  word  like  nice  back  to  the 
Latin  nescius,  "  ignorant,"  or  find  in  an  old  poem  Christ 
described  as  a  "  silly  knave,"  the  words  then  meaning 
"  holy  boy,"  we  can  see  that  the  laws  by  which  words 
change  their  meaning  are  complex  enough  to  give  a 
science  which  examines  them  plenty  of  work  to  do. 

The  foundations  of  the  science  which  changed 
etymology  from  mere  random  guessing  into  a  sound 
process  of  reasoning  were  laid  when,  mainly  through 
the  labours  of  our  great  countryman,  Sir  William 
Jones,  the  Western  world  became  possessed  of  the 
ancient  language  of  India.  That  the  classical  lan- 
guages of  Greece  and  Rome  were  very  closely 
connected  had  been  always  taken  for  granted  :  indeed 
their  nearness  to  one  another  was  greatly  exaggerated. 
But  that  they  formed  only  a  part  of  a  gigantic  system 
of  related  languages,  spoken  by  races  scattered  over 
the  lands  lying  between  India  and  Iceland,  was  never 
dreamt  of  till  the  obvious  identity  between  the  San- 
skrit noun  and  verb  systems  and  those  of  Greek  and 
Latin  was  presented  to  the  Western  scholar's  eye. 
It  was  Sir  William  Jones  himself  who  first  drew  the 


4  The  Science 

momentous  inference,  in  words  which  well  deserve 
quoting  :  "  The  Sanskrit  language,  whatever  may  be 
its  antiquity,  is  of  wonderful  structure  ;  more  perfect 
than  the  Greek,  more  copious  than  the  Latin,  and 
more  exquisitely  refined  than  either,  yet  bearing  to 
both  of  them  a  stronger  affinity,  both  in  the  roots  of 
verbs  and  in  the  forms  of  grammar,  than  could  have 
been  produced  by  accident  ;  so  strong  that  no 
philologer  could  examine  all  the  three  without  be- 
lieving them  to  have  sprung  from  some  common 
source  which,  perhaps,  no  longer  exists.  There  is 
a  similar  reason,  though  not  quite  so  forcible,  for  sup- 
posing that  both  the  Gothic  and  the  Celtic,  though 
blended  with  a  different  idiom,  had  the  same  origin 
with  the  Sanskrit."  This  brilliant  discovery,  declared 
in  the  year  1786,  practically  lies  at  the  root  of  all 
linguistic  science.  Our  science  is  not,  of  course,  solely 
concerned  with  the  languages  of  our  own  great  family 
of  speech,  but  the  principles  of  the  science  have  been 
built  up  exclusively  through  the  study  of  this  family, 
and  no  really  scientific  investigation  of  alien  languages 
could  possibly  be  carried  on  without  the  tools  which 
we  ultimately  owe  to  the  impulse  given  by  the  founder 
of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society. 

It  was  early  in  the  nineteenth  century  when  the 
English  scholar's  brilliant  apcrcu  was  taken  up  by  the 
Germans,  who  developed  it  into  a  scientific  fact,  and 
have  largely  kept  the  study  to  themselves  as  a  close 
preserve  of  German  industry  and  thoroughness  up  to 
the  present  time.  PInglish  genius  has  led  the  world  in 


of  Language  5 

mathematics  and  physical  science ;  while  our  literature 
for  five  hundred  years  has  been  without  a  rival  among 
the  literatures  of  Europe.  In  the  study  of  the  ancient 
classics  we  at  least  hold  our  own  ;  but  we  do  not 
seem  to  care  to  study  the  treasures  of  the  English 
language,  which  in  the  hands  of  German  students 

o          o     ' 

afford  material  for  two  periodicals  exclusively  devoted 
to  them.  And  in  the  science  of  language  we  have 
only  supplied  occasional  rivulets  to  swell  the  stream 
of  progress  ;  while  our  editors  of  classical  texts  are 
still  too  often  content  if  in  their  etymological  excur- 
sions they  lag  no  more  than  twenty  years  behind  the 
science  of  the  day. 

I  must  return  from  this  digression,  pleading  in 
excuse  of  it  the  necessity  of  accounting  in  advance 
for  the  foreign  names  which  will  mark  every  step  of 
the  advance  recorded  in  a  brief  sketch  of  a  science 
born  and  matured  within  the  nineteenth  century.  We 
begin  then  with  the  year  1816,  thirty  years  after 
Sir  William  Jones's  far-sighted  announcement,  when 
Franz  Bopp  published  the  first  of  a  series  of  works  in 
which  he  systcmatised  the  doctrine  of  the  common 
origin  of  the  languages  of  our  family,  and  examined 
the  history  of  their  forms.  His  life-work  may  be 
said  to  have  defined  for  us,  practically  on  lines  which 
we  still  follow,  the  limits  and  constituents  of  the  Indo- 
germanic  or  Aryan  family  of  languages.  Before  I  go 
further,  it  may  therefore  be  well  to  give  some  short 
description  of  the  field  as  left  by  Bopp's  labours,  with 
very  slight  modification  from  later  research.  WTe 


have  eight  main  languages  (apart  from  a  few  that  are 
only  known  by  fragments),  which  descend  from  a 
single  approximately  homogeneous  original,  long  ago 
lost.  Arranged  geographically  as  on  the  dial  of  a 
clock,  they  will  stand  thus.  (i)  Lithuanian,  still 
spoken  on  the  eastern  shore  of  the  Baltic ;  and 
Slavonic,  embracing  Russian  and  other  dialects  of  the 
Slav  nations.  These,  like  the  next  two  to  be  named, 
are  shown  to  be  so  closely  akin  that  we  must  reckon 
them  as  one  branch  rather  than  two.  (2)  Iranian,  the 
language  of  Persia  ;  and  Indian,  by  which  we  mean 
Vedic  and  the  classical  Sanskrit,  with  its  descendants 
Hindi,  Bengali,  and  others.  The  Indian  and  Iranian 
branches  are  combined  under  the  common  title  Aryan, 
by  which  both  peoples  knew  themselves  in  the  earliest 
times.  (3)  Armenian  ;  and  (4)  Albanian — two  less 
important  branches,  whose  original  position  on  the 
dial  is  not  quite  certain.  We  are  now,  from  the 
results  of  recent  investigations,  able  to  class  these  four 
together  as  the  eastern  section  of  the  family  ;  the  four 
western  branches  will  occupy  the  left-hand  half  of  our 
dial.  These  are  (5)  Greek,  ancient  and  modern  ;  (6) 
Italic,  including  Latin  and  certain  minor  dialects  of 
ancient  Italy,  together  with  the  Romance  languages 
of  to-day,  descendants  of  colloquial  Latin  ;  (7)  Keltic^, 
which  preserves  a  rather  precarious  vitality  in  Brittany, 
Wales  and  Ireland,  and  even  less  than  this  in  Scotland 

1  Italic  and  Keltic  are  so  closely  bound  together  by  important 
phonetic  and  morphological  affinities  that  they  arc  sometimes  .spoken 
of  as  one  branch. 


of  Language  7 

and  Man  ;  and  lastly  (8)  Germanic,  the  dominant 
language  of  all  the  lands  of  Western  Europe  which 
are  not  washed  by  the  Mediterranean.  We  must 
allow  at  least  the  fourth  quarter  of  our  dial  to  this 
prolific  member  of  the  family,  which  at  the  top  of  the 
dial  touches  the  first  of  the  eastern  branches,  Lithu- 
anian. A  name  has  to  be  found  which  will  con- 
veniently represent  the  whole.  German  scholars  insist 
on  Indo- Germanic,  a  name  combining  the  extreme 
east  and  extreme  west  of  the  language  area.  Far  less 
cumbrous  is  the  name  Aryan,  popularised  in  England 
by  Max  Miiller,  and  plausibly  supported  by  the 
etymology  which  traces  the  word  in  Erin — a  fact 
which,  if  proved,  would  have  gone  far  to  show  that 
the  undivided  people  called  themselves  Aryans  in  pre- 
historic times.  But  since  Aryan  is  a  name  undeni- 
ably appropriated  by  the  ancient  Indians  and  Iranians, 
it  is  safer  to  restrict  it  to  the  second  of  the  eight  main 
branches  just  described,  and  use  for  the  whole  family 
the  title  Indogermanic,  which,  if  clumsy,  is  at  any  rate 
free  from  ambiguity. 

Pursuing  our  historical  order,  we  come  next  to  the 
great  name  of  Jacob  Grimm.  We  all  become  familiar 
with  that  name  in  childhood  through  the  great  collec- 
tion of  folklore  stories,  in  which  the  anthropologist 
and  the  small  boy  are  equally  at  home.  Later  on, 
the  sound  of  "Grimm's  Law"  forces  itself  on  our 
attention,  and  the  great  principle  therein  laid  down 
may  very  possibly  be  to  this  day  the  sole  possession 
we  hold  in  the  realm  of  Comparative  Philology.  The 
M.  2 


8  77/6?  Science 

Law  was  enunciated  in  1822,  and  may  fairly  be  set 
down  to  the  account  of  the  great  scholar  whose  name 
it  bears,  although  the  idea  of  it  had  been  announced 
before.  Since  it  is  obviously  impossible  in  this  lecture 
even  to  sketch  in  the  briefest  manner  the  whole  field 
of  Indogermanic  philology,  I  shall  probably  lay  out 
my  time  to  most  advantage  if  I  take  up  one  or  two 
salient  points  and  show  their  bearing  on  the  principles 
of  the  science  as  a  whole  Grimm's  Law  is  certainly 
the  best  possible  point  from  which  to  begin,  for  I  may 
fairly  assume  it  to  be  generally  known,  and  it  is  at 
the  same  time  of  immense  importance  in  the  history 
of  linguistic  study.  Its  importance  is  indeed  utterly 
out  of  proportion  to  the  field  which  it  immediately 
affects.  We  who  speak  English  can  easily  realise  the 
significance  of  a  law  which  must  be  considered  almost 
every  time  when  we  seek  Latin  or  Greek  cognates  for 
words  in  our  own  language. — a  law  which  in  its  further 
development  rules  the  relations  between  Dutch  or 
English  and  the  literary  language  of  Germain-.  But, 
after  all,  there  are  other  civilised  languages  besides 
German,  Dutch,  or  Norse,  and  even  besides  English, 
and  we  may  find  ourselves  asking  whether  Grimm's 
Law  would  have  quite  the  same  perspective  if  we 
were  Frenchmen  or  Russians  or  Hindoos.  Practically, 
the  answer  would  be  yes.  Grimm's  Law  is  not  merely 
a  convenience  whereby  we  may  scientifically  equate 
our  word  brotJicr  with  the  Latin  /rater,  the  Greek 
(frpdrjjp,  the  Sanskrit  bhratar,  and  again  the  German 
Brudcr,  or  deny  the  identity  of  call  with  the  Greek 


of  Language  9 

Ka\.dj,  for  all  their  nearness  of  sound  and  meaning.  It 
has  proved  in  experience  the  great  educator  in  the 
science  of  language.  Its  presence  has  perpetually 
reminded  amateur  etymologists — and  it  is  astonishing 
how  universally  people  feel  themselves  qualified  to 
tackle  an  etymology,  however  innocent  of  special  know- 
ledge they  may  be — that  there  are  laws  governing 
the  changes  of  human  speech,  which  can  only  be  set 
aside  by  the  presence  of  other  factors  known  to  the 
expert  alone.  And  even  among  experts,  the  wide 
extent  of  its  operations  and  the  sureness  with  which 
it  works  have  done  more  than  anything  else,  perhaps, 
to  evolve  the  conviction  that  phonetic  changes  are 
exempt  from  mere  caprice,  and  so  to  place  our  science 
upon  the  firm  basis  which  it  occupies  to-day. 

For  the  present  I  propose  to  develop  the  history 
of  scientific  method  in  terms  of  Grimm's  Law,  aban- 
doning the  strictly  chronological  order  with  which  we 
began.  How  did  this  far-reaching  change  originate, 
and  by  what  steps  did  it  arrive  at  its  present  wonderful 
uniformity?  In  those  fascinating  Lectures  on  tJic 
Science  of  Language,  by  which  the  late  Professor  Max 
Muller  did  so  much  to  popularise  linguistic  study  in 
our  country,  an  account  is  given  which  raises  all  at 
once  the  question  of  the  nature  of  phonetic  change. 
Practically  it  comes  to  this.  The  Germans  found 
themselves  no  longer  able  to  pronounce  the  difficult 
sounds  b/i,  dJi  and  gh  which  they  had  inherited  from 
their  Indogermanic  forefathers,  and  (like  several  other 
members  of  the  family)  came  to  say  /;,  d  and  g  instead. 


io  The  Science 

But  this  involved  confusion  with  words  which  had 
a  b,  d  or  g  already.  Therefore,  with  a  conscientious- 
ness lacking  in  those  other  Indogermans,  who  did  not 
mind  the  confusion,  they  replaced  b,  d  and  g  by  p,  t 
and  k.  This,  however,  was  thoughtless  of  them,  for 
these  sounds  likewise  were  appropriated.  Having 
committed  themselves  too  far  to  go  back,  they  had  to 
bring  in  a  new  set  of  sounds,/",  th  and  /i,  which  accord- 
ingly took  up  the  old  /,  t  and  k,  and  the  "  sound- 
shifting  "  was  complete.  We  should  have  to  postulate 
a  somewhat  similar  process  when,  about  a  thousand 
years  after  the  first  sound-shifting,  the  High  Germans 
started  a  second,  by  which  the  existing  Germanic 
b,p  and /"were  shifted  on  further  to  p,  j^f  and  b,  with 
similar  changes  for  the  dentals  and  gutturals.  You 
will  probably  anticipate  the  fatal  objection  against 
any  such  explanation.  It  postulates  a  conscious 
change,  simultaneously  adopted  by  a  whole  people, 
and  the  briefest  reflexion  will  show  that  such  things 
do  not  and  cannot  happen.  Phonetic  changes  are  not 
determined  by  committees.  Speech  is  unconscious, 
except  when  we  are  trying  to  conform  our  pronuncia- 
tion to  that  of  our  neighbours.  The  realisation  of  this 
point  will  prepare  us  for  the  study  of  the  latest  phase 
of  enquiry  upon  which  our  science  has  entered.  I 
cannot  enter  now  on  the  solution  of  the  interesting 
question  as  to  the  causes  from  which  the  "  sound- 
shiftings  "  arose.  Suffice  it  if  I  observe  that  no  expla- 
nation will  suit  the  phenomena  of  language  which 
does  not  recognise  the  unconscious  and  independent 


of  Language  1 1 

character  of  the  changes.  Some  may  have  changed  by 
the  imperfect  efforts  of  natives  to  catch  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  foreigners.  In  others,  an  imperceptible  variation 
beginning  on  one  kind  of  sound  alone,  and  presumably 
only  under  definite  conditions — such  as  combination 
with  other  sounds,  or  appearance  at  the  beginning  or 
the  end  of  a  word — gradually  spread  till  the  change 
was  complete  for  that  set  of  sounds.  Meanwhile 
another  set  would  independently  begin  to  suffer 
change,  till  after  a  few  generations  the  process  was 
accomplished  without  any  of  the  speakers  of  the  lan- 
guage knowing  how  far  they  had  come. 

I  have  not  yet  done  with  Grimm's  Law,  but  for 
a  few  minutes  I  must  relapse  into  history  to  show  the 
background  on  which  modern  science  is  set  forth. 
For  this  purpose  we  must  pass  over  nearly  half  a 
century  of  laborious  collection  and  ordering  of  facts, 
and  neglect  entirely  the  work  of  some  of  the  greatest 
masters  in  Indogermanic  philology.  I  pause  on  the 
names  of  Max  Miiller  and  Curtius,  the  more  readily 
as  they  seem  to  represent  the  latest  stage  of  science 
as  conceived  by  many  English  scholars  when  obliged 
to  venture  on  the  unfamiliar  ground  of  comparative 
philology.  Both  were  champions  of  law  and  order  in 
the  realm  of  language,  but  their  systems  of  law 
allowed  room  for  a  carnival,  in  which  ordinary  princi- 
ples were  suspended.  Max  Miiller  devoted  himself  to 
the  special  study  of  comparative  mythology,  and 
collected  a  large  number  of  fairly  similar  names  in 
Sanskrit  and  Greek,  which  he  paraded  as  historically 


12  The  Science 

connected  words.  A  complex  fabric  of  primitive  Indo- 
germanic  mythology  was  thus  constructed,  mostly 
centring  on  manifestations  of  the  Dawn-goddess. 
Alas  !  this  pretty  theory  has  long  since  vanished  into 
air,  into  thin  air,  for  hardly  one  of  the  innumerable 
equations  will  hold  when  examined  by  more  rigid 
methods.  Curtius  attempted  to  hold  the  carnival 
under  a  semblance  of  restraint.  He  laid  it  down  that 
\vhen  sounds  began  to  become  difficult,  in  the  speech 
of  any  nation,  they  passed  generally  into  some 
"regular"  representative  sound,  but  also  "sporadically" 
into  others.  Thus  the  w  sound  in  Greek,  which  we 
call  digamma,  "  regularly  "  disappeared  in  the  course 
of  development,  but  "  sporadically  "  metamorphosed 
itself  into  b,  g,  h,  m,  ph,  r,  o  and  u.  Most  of  these 
were  supported  only  by  two  or  three  examples,  which 
were  regarded  as  proof  specimens  on  very  arbitrary 
grounds.  It  was  clear  that  although  the  realm  of 
chance  and  caprice  in  language  had  been  very  greatly 
narrowed,  there  was  still  much  to  be  done  before  any- 
thing like  an  exact  science  could  emerge. 

Between  1870  and  1880  certain  brilliant  discoveries 
were  made  which  at  one  stroke  reduced  to  order  a 
large  proportion  of  the  irregularities  left  by  earlier 
investigators  into  Indogermanic  phonetics.  The  effect 
of  such  discoveries  is  rather  like  that  of  the  discovery 
of  Neptune  in  the  realm  of  astronomy :  serious  irregu- 
larities traced  down  to  some  hitherto  unsuspected  new 
factor,  the  presence  of  which  makes  everything  orderly, 
form  a  most  impressive  argument  for  the  universal 


of  Language  13 

reign  of  law.  It  is  fitting  that  among  these  discoveries 
should  stand  out  an  explanation  of  irregularities  in 
the  working  of  Grimm's  Law.  Verner's  Law,  as  the 
new  principle  is  called  from  its  discoverer,  deals  with 
cases  in  which  original  /,  t  and  /',  instead  of  passing 
into  f,  tli  and  //  as  Grimm's  Law  demands,  become 
b,  d  and  g.  Verner  showed  that  this  depended  on  the 
position  of  the  accent,  and  that  the  accent  thus  evi- 
denced for  the  primitive  Germanic  was  identical  with 
that  still  preserved  in  Vedic  Sanskrit  and  to  some 
extent  in  Greek.  This  discovery  gave  a  great  impulse 
to  the  growing  sense  of  regularity  in  language.  At 
the  same  time  it  went  far  beyond  Grimm's  Law  in 
the  light  it  threw  on  the  conditions  of  primeval  Indo- 
germanic  speech,  for  the  coincidence  of  the  accent  in 
the  two  most  widely-severed  branches  of  the  family 
proved  what  the  accent  was  in  the  original  language 
from  which  both  were  descended.  Verner's  Law  was 
accompanied  b}*  other  discoveries  which  entirely  trans- 
formed our  conceptions  of  this  original  Indogermanic 
language.  Schleicher,  the  great  pioneer  whose  work 
marks  the  first  decided  advance  from  the  standpoint 
of  Bopp  and  Grimm,  reconstructed  the  parent  lan- 
guage as  an  exceedingly  simple  organism,  with  only 
three  vowels,  a,  i  and  //,  and  consonants  cut  down 
to  a  small  figure.  The  discoveries  of  later  years,  in 
which  the  name  of  Karl  Brugmann  holds  the  place  of 
honour,  turn  this  reconstruction  into  something  far 
more  complex.  The  simple  vowels  are  extended  to 
include  c  and  o  and  others  ;  by  the  side  of  /  and  // 


14  The  Science 

stand  r,  /,  m  and  n  as  sharing  their  power  of  becoming 
vowels  or  consonants  at  will  ;  the  gutturals  are  turned 
into  three  series  instead  of  one,  and  on  their  behaviour 
depends  the  allocation  of  any  given  dialect  to  the 
Eastern  or  the  Western  side  of  the  Indogermanic 
family.  In  addition  to  this  there  is  revealed  a  com- 
plicated system  of  stress  and  pitch  accents.  The 
result  is  that  if  anyone  learnt  to  speak  the  Indo- 
germanic language  as  it  stands  to-day,  he  could  not 
possibly  make  himself  understood  by  one  who  had 
similarly  learnt  the  language  according  to  Schleicher. 
Five  for  Schleicher  was  kankan,  for  us  pt'wq^e1 
(Western)  or  penqc  (Eastern) :  horse  for  him  was 
akwas,  for  us  echivos2,  and  so  on.  The  difference  may 
be  a  useful  warning  if  we  are  in  any  clanger  of  regarding 
our  scientific  reconstructions  of  the  parent  language  as 
the  definite  discovery  of  a  dialect  which  was  spoken  at 
one  particular  time  in  the  dim  and  distant  past.  I  shall 
have  to  deal  with  this  caution  in  the  next  lecture,  in 
which  I  shall  try  to  show  what  help  Language  can  give 
us  in  unveiling  the  life  and  civilisation  of  those  primeval 
men  from  whom  we  are  partially  descended,  and  to 

1  The  symbol  TJ  represents  our  tig,  the  guttural  nasal  :  the  parasite 
w  (it  is  the  consonantal  u)  is  closely  attached  to  the  consonant — pcng-que 
(not  pcnk-ive]  would  repre.-ent  the  pronunciation. 

-  The  li  palatal  k  "  (k  in  Brugmann's  notation)  was  probably  pro- 
nounced like  the  Scotch  ch  in  loch.  This  will  account  for  the  Eastern 
sh  or  s,  and  the  Western  k  alike:  the  former  change  is  paralleled  by 
the  South  German  pronunciation  of  nicht  as  nish(,  the  latter  by  the 
"Lock  Lomond"  which  the  steamer  officials  endure  from  so  many 
Southron  lips  in  the  tourist  season. 


of  Language  15 

whom  we  owe  our  speech.  Meanwhile  it  will  be 
enough  to  remind  you  that  the  forms  which  appear 
in  scientific  books,  as  due  to  the  parent  Indogermanic 
language,  are  only  convenient  formulae  to  show  what 
we  have  learnt  of  the  history  of  words  extant  in 
ancient  or  modern  languages  of  our  group.  They 
may  represent  words  actually  spoken  by  prehistoric 
men,  perhaps  however  at  intervals  of  some  centuries 
from  one  another.  Or  they  may  be  as  far  from  the 
words  actually  spoken  as  were  Schleicher's  recon- 
structions from  those  in  vogue  to-day  ;  for  it  can 
hardly  be  that  this  science  will  stand  still  in  genera- 
tions of  research  yet  to  come. 

I  pass  on,  then,  to  the  brief  enunciation  and  illus- 
tration of  the  principles  of  our  science  as  we  under- 
stand them  now.  What  I  have  been  saying  will 
prepare  you  for  the  latest  development  of  our  theory. 
Exceptions  to  phonetic  laws  have  been  reduced 
enormously  by  the  successive  establishment  of  new 
laws  covering  every  part  of  Inclogermanic  speech,  and 
the  natural  result  is  that  scholars  have  been  drawn  to 
go  a  step  further  and  declare  that  phonetic  laws,  as 
such,  admit  of  no  exception.  Since  this  bold  declara- 
tion was  first  made  by  Leskien,  in  18/6,  it  has  been 
furiously  debated,  and  it  may  perhaps  be  questioned 
whether  on  grounds  of  theory  alone  it  has  been 
conclusively  established.  But  some  of  the  most 
contemptuous  critics  of  the  "  Xeo-grammarians,"  as 
they  are  called,  have  led  the  way  in  discovering  new 
phonetic  laws,  and  therefore  in  reducing  further  the 


1 6  The  Science 

number  of  words  which  would  have  to  be  classed  as 
"  irregular."  Whether  therefore  we  are  or  are  not 
prepared  to  assert  as  a  matter  of  theory  that  there 
cannot  be  irregularities  in  language  caused  by  the 
capricious  action  of  phonetic  law,  we  may  certainly 
use  as  a  working  principle  the  doctrine  of  the  fixity  of 
law  in  human  speech.  For  example,  if  anyone  should 
tell  us  that  of  course  the  Latin  and  Greek  words 
for  God,  dcus  and  6eos,  must  have  a  common  origin, 
because  they  sound  so  nearly  alike  and  have  the  same 
meaning,  we  promptly  deny  the  identity,  because 
phonetic  laws  stand  in  the  way.  A  Greek  tJi  cannot 
answer  to  a  Latin  d  at  the  beginning  of  a  word,  and 
we  prove  our  point  by  citing  a  number  of  words  in 
which  Greek  tJi  and  Latin  initial/ stand  in  clear  rela- 
tion to  one  another,  while  we  challenge  the  objector  to 
produce  any  other  example  in  which  a  Latin  d  has 
ousted  the  regular  f.  He  declares  that  this  is  an 
exception,  and  denies  our  right  to  assert  that  such 
exceptions  are  inadmissible.  It  is  quite  unnecessary 
for  us  to  fall  back  on  a  general  theory  that  Language 
knows  nothing  of  exceptions,  acting  always  with  the 
precision  of  a  law  of  nature.  It  is  enough  to  say 
that  our  opponent  is  bound  to  show  cause  why  the 
originals  of  our  deism  and  theism  must  necessarily  be 
the  same.  Meaning  and  similarity  of  sound  count 
for  nothing,  for  coincidences  of  the  kind  can  be  pro- 
duced by  the  score.  The  Hebrew  kapJiar  means  cover, 
but  no  one  out  of  Bedlam  thinks  the  identity  a  suffi- 
cient proof  of  our  descent  from  the  Lost  Ten  Tribes  ! 


of  Language  1 7 

I  proceed  to  show  in  what  sense  the  dictum  of 
the  invariability  of  phonetic  law  is  to  be  understood. 
I  find  it  convenient  to  state  the  principle  in  the 
following  form,  to  which  I  ask  your  special  attention 
as  covering  the  whole  field  in  short  compass. 

"  The  same  original  sound  cannot,  in  the  same 
period  of  the  same  dialect,  pass  under  the  same  con- 
ditions into  two  different  sounds." 

You  will  observe  the  four  sanies  of  this  state- 
ment. Eliminate  any  one  of  them  and  you  get  what 
seems  an  irregularity.  It  will  I  think  be  helpful  to 
give  one  or  two  illustrations  under  each  of  these 
heads. 

First,  then,  " tlie  same  original  sound"  Examples 
under  this  head  may  be  supplied  from  all  the  novelties 
in  linguistic  discovery  which  I  have  been  trying  to 
sketch  this  morning.  Take  the  English  words  guest 
(German  Cast}  and  warm.  The  initials  g  and  w  are 
found  alike  in  Sanskrit  as  gh,  and  it  was  formerly 
assumed  that  in  such  cases  the  Indogermanic  sound 
was  gh,  which  was  differentiated  later  in  Western 
languages  into  two  sounds,  the  latter  containing  a  w. 

O  O  O 

We  now  know  that  the  guttural  in  question  was 
not  the  same  in  the  two  cases,  the  latter  belonging 
to  a  series  in  which  the  ii>  was  strongly  developed 
throughout  the  Western  languages,  and  dropped  in 
the  Eastern.  An  illustration  of  a  different  kind  may 
be  seen  in  the  English  -ougli  words,  which  supply  so 
powerful  an  argument  to  the  advocates  of  phonetic 
spelling,  and  so  strong  an  irritant  to  the  foreigner 


1 8  The  Science 

trying  to  learn  our  language.  In  plough  and  bough 
alike  the  ough  goes  back  to  an  Old  English  oh,  while 
dough  is  from  dak,  and  Lough  is  a  Keltic  word,  coming 
under  our  third  head  below.  Speaking  generally,  we 
may  say  that  modern  science  tends  to  seek  different 
originals  when  a  wide-spread  irregularity  appears  in 
the  representation  of  what  has  been  taken  to  be  the 
same  sound.  To  simplify  the  parent  language,  by 
reducing  the  number  of  sounds  in  it,  is  no  longer 
felt  to  be  obligatory.  A  very  early  language  may 
be  very  complex  in  its  sounds,  and  progress  is  at 
least  as  likely  to  weed  out  unnecessary  sounds  as  to 
invent  new  ones. 

We  pass  to  our  second  heading,  "in  the  same 
period'.'  Phonetic  laws  must  not  be  supposed  to  be 
permanent :  they  came  into  being  slowly  and  un- 
consciously, and  slowly  and  unconsciously  they  die 
away.  It  is  always  therefore  vital  that  we  should 
know  of  a  given  law  at  what  period,  as  well  as  in 
what  area,  it  worked.  Grimm's  Law  will  supply  ex- 
cellent examples.  What  we  call  the  ''first  sound- 
shifting"  ceased  to  act  in  the  Germanic  languages 
some  centuries  before  Christ.  It  gave  us  words  like 
father,  where  the /was  undeniably  sounded  by  our  rude 
ancestors  who  roamed  over  Northern  Europe  before 
the  time  when  Caesar  was  invading  Britain.  It  had 
ceased  to  act  long  before  the  Saxons  followed  him 
thither.  Consequently,  when  the  Saxons  borrowed 
Latin  words  like  strata  they  had  no  instinct  leading 
them  to  change  the  t  sound,  and  it  has  remained  in 


of  Language  19 

the  English  word  street  for  a  thousand  years.  It 
would  not  have  so  remained  had  the  Saxons  been 
infected  with  the  new  tendency  which  in  upper 
Germany  was  beginning  to  shift  all  these  sounds 
afresh.  The  High  Germans  made  strata  into  Strasse, 
pondus  into  Pfund,  etc.;  but  this  tendency  in  its  turn 
died  away,  and  when  Modern  German  borrows  a 
Latin  word  \\ViQ  praedico,  German  prcdigc,  it  leaves  the 
/  alone,  just  as  English  does  \n  preach. 

Thirdly,  "of  the  same  dialect"  The  colossal  irregu- 
larities of  English  are  very  largely  due  to  dialect 
mixture.  A  thousand  years  ago  English  included 
many  dialects,  all  with  equal  possibilities  in  the 
struggle  for  survival  as  the  ultimate  literary  language 
of  our  country.  The  dialect  which  was  spoken  most 
typically  not  far  west  of  Cambridgeshire1  finally 
won  the  day;  but  words  and  forms  from  other  dia- 
lects became  imbedded  in  the  standard  language, 
so  that  to-day  it  presents  a  bewildering  medley  of 
inconsistencies.  To  a  less  extent,  but  still  con- 
siderably, Latin  similarly  absorbed  dialectic  peculi- 
arities. One  example  I  may  give,  as  a  very  pretty 
specimen  of  the  way  in  which  irregularities  are  cleared 
off  in  modern  research.  There  are  a  number  of  Latin 
words  in  which  an  original  ^becomes  /.  Lingua  is  for 
dingua,  as  the  English  tongue  will  show  when  Grimm's 
Law  has  been  applied.  Olcrc,  "to  smell,"  is  clearly 
connected  with  odor,  "  odour."  Larix  (our  larch}  is 

1  See  Professor  Skoal's  interesting  pamphlet  on  ihe  place-names  of 
Cambridgeshire  (Cambridge  Antiquarian  Society). 


2O  The  Science 

akin  to  the  English  word  tree.  Proceeding  on  the 
assumption  that  dialect  mixture  was  the  probable 
cause  of  this  irregularity,  a  distinguished  philologist, 
Professor  Con  way,  began  to  look  for  an  Italian  dialect 
in  which  all  initial  </s,  or  ds  between  vowels,  became  /. 
The  remains  of  the  dialect  on  which  he  fixed  are 
extremely  scanty.  But  it  happens  that  Horace  speaks 
of  a  small  river  called  Digoitia  which  flowed  past  his 
country-house.  Its  modern  name  is  Licenza,  and 
Dr  Conway  showed  that  its  name  would  be  pro- 
nounced with  the  /  by  the  Sabines,  through  whose 
district  it  flowed,  but  that  when  it  emerged  into  Latin 
territory  the  older  d  would  be  heard.  Modern  Italian 
has  here  preserved  the  Sabine  form,  as  Latin  did  in 
such  words  as  I  mentioned  just  now.  It  is  therefore 
no  longer  necessary  to  say  that  "d  remains  d  in  Latin, 
but  the  rule  is  broken  in  a  few  words  where  /  ap- 
pears." On  the  contrary,  d  always  remains  d  under 
these  circumstances,  and  the  /  of  lingua  and  oleo  is 
simply  due  to  borrowing  from  the  Sabine  dialect. 

Finally,  "  under  tJie  same  conditions!'  A  great 
feature  of  modern  research  has  been  the  emphasis 
laid  on  the  extent  to  which  we  change  the  pronunci- 
ation of  our  words  in  different  surroundings.  We 
say  right-e-ous,  pcr-haps,  sup-pose,  when  we  talk  de- 
liberately,— richus,  p'raps,  spose,  when  we  are  in  a 
hurry.  The  /  in  right  remains  /  unless  there  is  a  kind 
of  y  sound  following  it,  as  in  the  righteous  of  the 
educated  man  in  a  hurry,  or  the  right-you-are  (ri-chu- 
arc)  of  the  more  slangy  individual.  An  immense 


of  Language  21 

variety  of  differences  are  produced  by  the  shifting  of 
accent.  The  word  accent  itself,  when  a  noun,  would 
be  correctly  written  dksnt,  the  second  syllable  being 
reduced  to  a  mere  vocalic  ;/  by  the  stress  on  the  first 
syllable;  when  a  verb,  accent,  it  has  the  full  en.  In 
general,  we  can  never  say  positively  that  "the  same 
original  sound  at  the  same  period  of  the  same  dialect" 
will  produce  the  same  resultant  sound  in  two  different 
words,  until  we  have  examined  into  the  effects  of 
accentual  conditions,  neighbouring  sounds,  rapidity 
of  pronunciation,  and  any  other  possible  differences  of 
condition  which  may  affect  the  ultimate  form  of  the 
words  in  question. 

So  much  then  for  the  changes  in  Language  which 
are  due  exclusively  to  phonetic  development.  A  few 
words  should  be  added  to  describe  the  manner  in 
which  all  these  changes  arise.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  speech  is  transmitted  entirely  by  the  reproduc- 
tion of  sounds  and  words  we  have  heard  from  others. 
An  English  infant,  placed  from  the  first  in  the  care 
of  Russians,  Persians,  or  Zulus,  would  speak  their 
language,  and  would  not  have  the  slightest  inherited 
predilection  in  favour  of  English1.  Speech  is  a  joint 
function  of  the  ears  and  the  vocal  organs,  and  both 
may  fail  to  catch  the  sound  correctly.  So  long  as  the 
variation  is  not  serious  enough  to  be  noticed  by  those 
from  whom  he  learns,  the  child  will  go  on  pronouncing 


22  The  Science 

in  his  own  way;  and  by  slow  changes,  accumulating 
from  generation  to  generation,  the  dialect  will  pro- 
gressively alter.  But  this  is  assuming  that  the  com- 
munity speaking  the  dialect  is  compact  enough  for  its 
individuals  to  be  in  constant  communication  with  each 
other.  It  is  communication  which  preserves  speech 
from  change;  and  within  such  compact  communities 
the  rate  at  which  pronunciation  changes  will  depend 
entirely  on  their  sensitiveness  to  variety  in  sound. 
If  they  are  acute  of  ear,  they  will  soon  notice  and 
check  the  variations  introduced  by  the  children  who 
are  learning  to  speak  their  tongue ;  if  not,  they  will 
pass  over  the  children's  mispronunciations,  and  the 
language  will  change  rapidly.  Suppose  however  that 
the  community  is  not  compact,  that  people  living 
at  its  extreme  ends  never  meet.  The  result  will  be 
a  gradual  shading  off  of  dialect  from  one  end  to  the 
other;  and  if  the  area  is  sufficiently  large,  it  may  well 
be  that  the  extremes  are  mutually  unintelligible, 
though  neighbours  all  along  the  line  can  understand 
each  other  easily.  Now  suppose  that  an  agricultural 
people,  scattered  evenly  over  a  large  area,  gradually 
change  their  habits  and  concentrate  in  towns.  Clearly 
the  result  will  be  that  each  town  will  have  a  dialect 
of  its  own,  to  an  extent  depending  on  the  amount  of 
intercommunication  with  its  neighbours ;  and  when 
these  communities  become  separated  by  migration 
beyond  seas  or  rivers  or  mountains,  barriers  preventing 
intercourse,  each  dialect,  pursuing  its  own  development, 
will  draw  away  from  those  which  were  once  all  but 


of  Language  23 

identical  with  it,  till  at  last  the  limit  of  intelligibility 
is  passed  and  a  new  language  is  established.  Finally, 
there  is  the  disturbing  force  of  foreign  languages  to  be 
reckoned  with.  A  small  body  of  warriors  invades  and 
conquers  a  large  but  weaker  population.  It  generally 
follows  that  in  a  few  generations  the  conquerors  have 
been  absorbed  and  speak  the  language  of  the  con- 
quered; but  the  invaders,  learning  the  new  language 
late  in  life,  bring  their  own  pronunciation,  and  many  of 
their  own  words.  I  have  no  time  to  enlarge  upon  this 
subject  of  speech  mixture,  but  if  you  follow  up  the 
science  you  will  soon  realise  how  great  are  its  possi- 
bilities of  influence  upon  the  development  of  language. 
Time  forbids  any  adequate  attempt  to  describe 
the  immense  province  of  speech  which  separates  our 
science  from  the  physical  sciences  and  joins  it  to 
those  in  which  the  human  mind  is  the  object  of 
study.  On  the  purely  phonetic  side,  as  we  have  seen, 
language  develops  with  almost  machine-like  regu- 
larity. But  we  perpetually  find  that  phonetic  laws 
are  being  crossed  by  forces  which  are  almost  as 
conscious  and  deliberate  as  the  act  of  coining  a  new 
word,  or  applying  an  old  one  to  a  new  meaning. 
These  are  the  forces  of  Analogy,  which  assimilates 
the  forms  of  words  that  are  brought  into  frequent 
association  with  each  other.  The  principle  used  to  be 
known  as  "  False  Analogy,"  but  there  is  really  no  reason 
thus  to  stigmatise  a  highly  respectable  and  influential 
factor  in  the  development  of  speech.  We  are  under 
no  sort  of  obligation  to  maintain  the  inherited  forms 


24  The  Science 

of  language  when  we  can  save  our  memories  by 
bringing  a  minority  of  words  into  conformity  with 
a  majority.  If  we  choose  to  say  sorry  instead  of  sory 
(from  sore},  we  have  introduced  a  "  false"  element,  in 
that  sorry  and  sorrow  are  not  really  akin.  But  since 
the  words  have  come  to  be  associated  in  meaning,  it 
is  more  convenient  that  they  should  be  brought  near 
in  form  :  the  dictionary  will  keep  us  right  on  the 
etymology.  Or,  to  take  an  example  from  the  largest 
field  of  analogy's  operations,  when  our  ancestors  gave 
up  saying  rangJit  as  the  past  tense  of  reach,  was  it 
a  "false"'  analogy  which  made  them  realise  that  a 
past  tense  normally  differs  from  a  present  by  adding 
</?  They  discarded  forms  which  once  had  a  meaning 
in  favour  of  forms  which  have  a  clear  meaning  still, 
and  we  can  only  regret  the  caprice  which  failed  to 
insist  on  tcachcd  and  btscccjicd  as  well,  or,  if  that  could 
not  be,  at  least  to  make  us  keep  the  old  forms  and 
bring  in  prangJit  to  match  them! 

It  is  usual  to  classify  the  operations  of  analogy 
under  the  heads  formal  and  logical.  Formal  ana- 
logy assimilates  the  declension  or  conjugation  of 
words  originally  belonging  to  different  categories. 
Material,  or  logical,  analog}-  clears  away  variations  no 
longer  intelligible  in  the  forms  belonging  to  one 
word,  after  which  formal  analogy  often  steps  in  and 
uses  the  convenient  innovation  for  the  benefit  of  other 
words.  A  few  examples  will  sufficiently  illustrate 
the  extent  of  these  operations.  Old  English  inherited 
from  the  Indogermanic  period  a  system  of  vowel- 


of  Language  25 

gradation,  originally  the  automatic  result  of  accent. 
This  dominated  the  forms  of  the  past  tense  very 
largely,  as  it  did  those  of  the  perfect  in  Greek.  The 
first  and  third  persons  singular  had  the  forms  sang, 
wrote,  sat.  the  second  person  singular  and  the  whole 
plural  showed  sung,  writ,  sit.  As  late  as  Chaucer  we 
still  find  /  wot,  we  witen,  in  which  same  word  Greek 
likewise  presented  the  identical  vowel  distinction  (olSa, 
i<rp.€v).  Obviously  the  distinction  served  no  useful 
purpose,  and  logical  analogy  cleared  it  away  :  later 
English  said  we  wot,  and  Hellenistic  Greek  said 
oiBapev.  In  French  the  regular  forms  evolved  from 
the  vulgar  Latin  parabola,  plural  paraboldnius,  were 
(je)  parole,  (nous)  parlous,  those  from  dmo,  aindmns, 
were  ainic,  anwns :  modern  French  has  levelled  these 
tenses,  and  only  a  few  survivals  like  j'ai,  nous  avons, 
je  viens,  nous  venous,  intrude  themselves  upon  the  un- 
willing English  schoolboy.  Old  English,  like  modern 
German,  insisted  on  modifying  the  vowel  of  a  word 
like  long  when  the  comparative  suffix  er  was  added, 
a  necessity  which  no  longer  ^  lenger"  they  would  say) 
appeals  to  us.  It  was  the  same  principle  which  made 
feet  the  plural  of  foot,  and  what  would  have  now  become 
bcek  the  plural  of  book.  From  this  last  grammatical 
abortion  formal  analog)'  delivered  us,  by  calling  in 
the  aid  of  the  multitude  of  nouns  which  made  their 
plural  by  the  simple  method  of  adding  s  or  es  to  the 
singular.  The  same  beneficent  process  destroyed  a 
great  number  of  highly  interesting  but  highly  incon- 
venient "strong  perfects,"  in  favour  of  the  simple  past 


26  The  Science 

in  d.  In  some  cases  it  worked  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion :  common  types  like  tore  from  tear  and  bore  from 
bear  naturally  gave  rise  to  wore  for  weared,  and  I 
have  heard  scrape  and  brung  produced  on  the  same 
principle  by  speakers  more  logical  than  educated. 

The  examples  of  Analogy  which  I  have  been 
describing  are  cases  affecting  a  whole  grammatical 
category.  We  may  feel  fairly  certain  that  most  of 
the  new  tense-formations  or  noun-cases,  etc.,  which 
characterise  the  various  dialects  of  the  Indogermanic 
or  other  families  of  speech,  owed  their  birth  to  this 
fertile  principle.  A  single  example,  if  it  produces 
something  convenient  and  "  meets  a  felt  want,"  as  the 
advertisers  say,  is  often  quite  enough  to  create  a  new 
class  of  forms.  Take  for  example  the  suffix  -isc, 
which  in  English,  as  in  the  Greek  whence  it  was 
borrowed,  can  be  added  so  freely  to  other  words  to 
make  a  nc\v  verb.  It  started  in  Greek  mainly  from 
an  extremely  small  class  of  nouns  with  a  stem  in  -18-, 
from  which  a  verb  in  -t'£o>  came  by  regular  rule.  But 
the  form  was  so  convenient  that  it  spread  at  an  ex- 
traordinary rate  in  Greek,  was  borrowed  by  Latin. 
passed  on  to  I-'rench  and  finally  to  English,  so  that 
if  a  Mr  MacAdam  invented  a  new  way  of  paving 
roads  the  language  was  ready  to  coin  "  macadamise," 
just  as  Greek  could  sum  up  in  the  opprobrious  verb 
Mcdisc  the  traitorous  action  of  Greeks  who  helped  the 
Medes  in  their  attempt  to  destroy  Greek  liberty. 

A  very  large  class  of  analogy  forms  has  nothing  to 
do  with  grammatical  categories,  but  consists  of  types 


of  Language  27 

which  have  affected  a  few  words  associated  with  them 
by  likeness  or  contrast  of  meaning.  In  all  languages 
such  groups  as  numerals,  colours,  parts  of  the  body, 
trees,  points  of  the  compass,  etc.,  have  influenced  one 
another,  especially  in  their  endings.  Norther  loses 
its  suffix  to  match  south,  but  northern  produces 
southern.  The  initial  f  of  four  is  plausibly  explained 
by  association  \\\\h.  five.  Such  associations  will  often 
start  new  suffixes,  appropriated  by  use  to  a  particular 
class  of  words.  In  Latin,  presumably  from  one  or  two 
examples,  a  whole  series  of  tree-names  has  arisen  with 
a  suffix  -snus  (as  al(s}nus,  pi(ts}nus).  Names  for 
groves  of  trees  usually  end  in  -etuin.  In  Latin  and  in 
Germanic  the  suffix  -wos  has  become  associated  with 
colour  words,  simply  because  it  happened  to  be 
common  to  two  original  colour  adjectives,  blue  and 
yellow,  Latin  fldvos  and  helvos,  whence  it  spread. 
Pairs  like  health  and  weal,  male  and  femel,  hither  and 
tJiatlier,  cither  and  notJier,  assimilated  one  another  and 
produced  forms  which  could  only  reduce  phonetics  to 
chaos  if  the  ever-present  influence  of  analogy  were 
not  recognised.  It  is  hardly  going  too  far  to  say  that 
whenever  a  single  word  shows  serious  difficulties  in  its 
formation,  the  first  instinct  of  a  modern  philologist  is 
to  search  for  some  twin  word  which  could  work  upon 
it  by  analogy.  Now  in  all  this  the  question  will 
natural!}'  occur  to  you,  "  How  did  Language  choose 
between  altering  A  to  match  B  and  altering  B  to 

o  o 

match  A  ?     Granted  that  we  should  not  be  likely  to 
say  /  sat  but  we  sit,  I  sang  but  we  sung-,  how  is  it  that 


28  The  Science 

we  did  not  come  to  say  in  the  past  tense  /  sit,  I  sungt 
Why  not  mell  and  femcl,  other  and  notiier,  heal  and 
luealT'  To  this  question  \ve  can  hardly  give  a  general 
answer,  any  more  than  we  can  to  the  allied  question  how 
taught  a.\\d.  feet  resisted  the  processes  which  destroyed 
rang/it  and  beck, — why  drownded  is  vulgar,  but  sounded 
correct,  and  so  on.  In  many  cases  we  can  see  a 
reason.  The  form  that  proved  the  survivor  shows 
itself  to  have  been  in  one  way  or  another  the  fittest  to 
survive.  It  occurred  in  the  larger  number  of  forms, 
or  in  those  which  were  most  in  use— it  avoided 
an  ambiguity  —  it  was  easier  to  pronounce  —  all 
manner  of  such  forces  turned  the  scale  in  individual 
instances.  Sometimes  the  scale  is  only  turned  after 
oscillations  to  and  fro.  Milton  says  /  sung  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  Charles  Wesley  he  begun  in 
the  eighteenth  ;  and  our  existing  sang  and  began  may 
have  to  yield  their  place,  for  all  we  know,  before  this 
century  is  out.  The  systematisation  of  these  mental 
processes,  by  which  Language  has  so  much  simplified 
itself,  will,  I  believe,  afford  plenty  of  work  to  the 
student  of  Indogcrmanic  philology  for  years  to  come, 
the  sphere  of  purely  phonetic  development  leaving 
us  now,  it  would  seem,  little  beyond  details  to  work 
upon. 

This  morning's  sketch — and  I  need  not  point  out 
to  you  how  absolutely  sketchy  a  single  lecture  upon 
so  vast  a  subject  must  be — has  indicated  some  of  the 
lines  on  which  the  modern  languages  have  developed 
throughout  their  long  history.  We  have  seen  in 


of  Language  29 

closing  how  they  have  been  enabled  to  rid  themselves 
of  accumulated  lumber,  and  evolve  the  combination 
of  simplicity  in  form  with  wealth  in  resource  which 
can  fit  them  for  the  complex  needs  of  modern  life. 
Obviously  the  language  which  has  most  successfully 
shaken  off  what  is  useless,  while  keeping  all  that 
makes  it  expressive  and  concise,  is  likely  to  outrun 
its  rivals  in  the  struggle  to  become  the  leading  lan- 
guage of  the  world.  Heaven  forbid  that,  with  guests 
present  from  so  many  other  nations  than  our  own,  I 
should  attempt  for  one  moment  to  argue  which  that 
victorious  language  is  likely  to  be  ! 

The  principles  which  have  this  morning  led  us  to 
the  latest  developments  of  speech  will  lead  us  also 
into  its  first  beginnings.  It  will  be  my  duty  to- 
morrow, not  indeed  to  venture  on  the  thorny  but 
fascinating  problem  of  the  Origin  of  Language,  but  to 
enquire  what  Language  can  teach  us  of  our  ancestors' 
lives  in  the  distant  past  which,  though  recent  when 
compared  with  man's  earliest  appearance  on  this 
planet,  lies  far  behind  all  literature  and  all  history. 
The  investigation,  even  though  it  fail  to  open  wide 
the  door  and  reveal  to  us  in  clear  and  brilliant  light 
the  long  vista  of  the  past,  will  at  least  tell  us  some- 
thing more  of  what  Language  is  and  what  Language 
can  do. 


II.     LANGUAGE    AND    PRIMITIVE 
HISTORY. 


"  Linguistic  Palaeontology,"  as  the  method  of  re- 
search which  I  am  to  describe  this  morning  is  usually 
called,  is  one  among  many  tools  which  we  may  use  to 
excavate  the  prehistoric  past.  Archaeology  studies 
its  material  relics.  Geology  offers  to  tell  us  under 
certain  conditions  the  dates  to  which  they  belong. 
Botany  and  Zoology  come  in  occasionally  to  pro- 
nounce upon  arguments  drawn  from  trees  or  animals 
which  are  brought  into  association  with  primitive 
man.  Craniology  measures  the  skulls  of  those  who 
were  considerate  enough  to  leave  them  behind,  and 
Ethnology  pursues  other  methods  of  classifying  their 
racial  characteristics.  Anthropology  and  Folklore 
investigate  primitive  man  by  studying  his  equally 
primitive  representatives  among  the  savages  of  to- 
day, and  by  following  out  through  modern  survivals 
the  history  of  customs  and  institutions,  superstitions 
and  magic.  The  Science  of  Language,  as  we  have 
seen,  can  do  something  towards  reconstructing  the 


Language  and  Primitive  History         31 

speech  and  vocabulary  of  the  parent  Indogerman 
peoples,  who  lived  ages  before  the  dawn  of  history, 
and  it  is  clear  that  this  reconstructed  vocabulary,  if 
properly  used,  can  tell  us  many  facts  about  the  life  of 
these  interesting  forbears  of  ours.  The  methods  I 
have  described  are  of  course  allies,  to  be  regarded  as 
necessary  to  one  another's  efficiency,  and  on  no  account 
to  be  used  exclusively  or  with  exaggerated  belief  in 
their  powers  when  standing  alone. 

There  are  scholars  who  seem  to  regard  Language 
as  almost  entirely  useless  for  this  purpose.  They 
press  the  weaknesses  of  Language  as  evidence  till 
they  persuade  themselves  that  it  is  sheer  waste  of 
time  to  study  Linguistic  Palaeontology  at  all.  As 
usual,  the  truth  would  seem  to  lie  between  two  ex- 
tremes. To  reject  the  mass  of  evidence,  the  nature 
of  which  I  am  to  describe,  is  surely  scepticism  gone 
mad.  To  imagine  Language  capable  of  proving  what 
we  ask  of  her,  without  help  from  sister  sciences,  is 
an  equally  foolish  presumption.  The  truly  scientific 
method  is  to  examine  most  carefully  the  cautions 
with  which  the  argument  from  language  must  be 
applied,  and  then  to  test  every  conclusion  by  evi- 
dence derived  from  other  sources.  Proceeding  in 
this  way  we  can  hardly  fail  to  get  some  trustworthy 
results. 

Let  us  then  note  firstly  the  cautions  to  be  observed 
in  making  our  vocabulary  of  primitive  speech,  and 
secondly  those  which  come  in  when  we  seek  to  use 
what  we  have  made.  Under  the  first  head  we  note 


32  Language 

that  the  presence  of  a  word  in  two  or  more  branches 
of  the  Indogerman  family  is  not  conclusive  for  its 
right  to  a  place  in  the  primitive  vocabulary.  It  is 
impossible  to  distinguish  decisively  between  a  case  of 
inheritance  and  a  case  of  early  borrowing  in  "  culture 
words,"  for  the  name  naturally  spreads  with  the  thing 
when  a  new  addition  is  made  to  the  possessions  of  a 
people.  For  instance,  the  \vord  jis/i,  which  is  common 
to  the  Italians,  Kelts,  and  Germans,  but  not  extant  else- 
where, may  have  arisen  in  one  of  these  contiguous 
peoples  and  spread  to  the  other  two :  Language 
perhaps  does  not  deny,  but  it  assuredly  does  not 
encourage  the  idea  that  a  prehistoric  Izaak  Walton 
taught  his  art  to  the  undivided  Indogermans.  We 
can  only  feel  confident  when  a  word  is  found  in 
branches  widely  separated  in  geographical  position, 
and  of  course  the  more  there  are  of  them  the  safer 
we  feel.  On  the  other  hand,  the  absence  of  a  word 
from  many  branches  is  not  conclusive  evidence 
against  it,  for  the  loss  of  old  words  is  a  perpetual 
phenomenon  in  all  languages.  The  primitive  words 
so)il  and  daughter  have  disappeared  in  Latin,  father 
and  mother  in  Gothic,  and  sister  has  so  far  disappeared 
from  Greek  that  only  an  old  lexicon  gives  evidence 
for  its  former  existence.  We  can  ourselves  watch  the 
superseding  of  hound  by  the  foreign  importation 
"  dog,"  and  many  similar  cases  may  be  observed. 


and  Primitive  History  33 

Moreover  the  absence  of  a  common  name  does  not 
prove  the  absence  of  the  tiling.  The  Indogermans 
had  no  common  word  for  "one,"  though  they  had 
numerals  from  two  up  to  hundred,  no  word  for 
"hand,"  though  foot  is  found  everywhere.  We  can 
hardly  infer  that  their  physical  and  mental  equip- 
ment was  so  deficient  as  the  argument  from  silence 
would  suggest  in  these  cases.  Besides  this  we  have 
to  remember  that  care  is  needed  before  we  set  down 
a  word  as  absent  from  any  particular  language. 
Gothic  comes  down  to  us  only  in  the  Biblical  version 
of  Wulfila,  the  important  Umbrian  dialect  of  Italy 
only  in  some  scanty  ritual  tablets.  Clearly  we  can 
only  argue  absence  in  such  cases  when  a  missing  old 
word  is  very  frequently  replaced  by  another,  as  we 
saw  just  now  happened  to  father  and  mother  in 
Gothic.  Even  in  Greek,  with  its  enormous  extant 
literature,  we  find  the  dictionary  enlarged  whenever 
a  new  work  is  unearthed,  or  a  new  batch  of  inscrip- 
tions or  papyri. 

Then  in  using  our  vocabulary  we  must  take  note 
of  the  warnings  received  from  "  Semantics,"  the  study 
of  the  meanings  of  words.  The  Latin  cognate  of 
beech  agrees  with  the  English,  but  the  Greek  means 
"  oak " ;  the  Greek  answering  to  tree  also  means 
"oak,"  while  in  some  languages  it  means  "fir"  or 
"  pine."  Nor  must  we  be  hasty  in  drawing  con- 
clusions from  the  existence  of  words  with  ascertained 
meanings  and  indubitable  authority.  Early  philo- 
logists drew  very  rosy  pictures  of  home  life  in  the 


34  Language 

primeval  age  on  the  strength  of  their  etymologies— 
father  meant  "protector"  and  dangJitcr  "milkmaid." 
In  these  days  we  prefer  not  to  dogmatise  about  the 
etymology  of  words  which  come  down  to  us  entire 
from  the  earliest  period.  Then,  to  take  another  kind 
of  example,  the  cognates  of  the  Latin  cquos,  which 
are  found  in  almost  every  main  language,  and  always 
with  the  meaning  "  horse,"  have  been  regarded  as 
proof  that  the  Indogermans  tamed  and  used  the  horse 
for  agriculture  or  war.  The  least  thought  will  show 

o  o 

that  the  mere  word  proves  nothing  but  their  familiarity 
with  it  and  its  being  sufficiently  important  to  them 
to  be  \vorth  naming.  A  prehistoric  cowboy  on  horse- 
back cannot  be  deduced  from  language  alone,  and  for 
all  the  linguist  can  tell  to  the  contrary,  the  interest  of 
the  Indogerman  in  the  quadruped  may  have  been 
purely  culinary. 

In  the  former  lecture  I  gave  some  account  of  the 
main  branches  of  the  Indogermanic  family,  as  ar- 
ranged according  to  language.  It  is  remarkable  that 
from  the  earliest  dawn  of  history  the  six  principal 
languages  belong  to  races  arranged  relatively  as  we 
see  them  now.  Indian  and  Iranian,  Slavonic  and 
Lithuanian,  the  two  main  branches  of  the  east 
Indogermanic  languages,  are  found  still  in  their 
relative  position,  with  Germanic,  Keltic,  Italic,  and 
Greek  following  in  this  order  down  the  western  side 
of  the  map.  If  we  squeeze  them  all  together,  leaving 
the  Lithuanians  and  Germans  near  the  shores  of  the 
Baltic,  and  the  rest  on  lines  running  to  the  south-east 


and  Primitive  Plistory  35 

and  south-west  or  south  respectively,  only  shorter 
than  they  were  before,  we  shall  obtain  a  very  pro- 
bable position  for  the  races  speaking  those  languages 
at  the  dawn  of  history. 

At  this  point  the  researches  of  archaeologists  and 
historians  come  in  to  show  us  that  the  great  north 
European  race,  associated  especially  with  the  Keltic 
and  Germanic  languages,  in  the  prehistoric  period 
sent  out  successive  swarms  of  sturdy  invaders  who 
established  themselves  as  a  conquering  caste  in 
various  southern  lands.  Their  tall  stature,  yellow 
or  sandy  hair  and  blue  eyes  contrasted  strongly 
with  the  features  of  the  short,  dark-haired  and 
swarthy  races  which  inhabited  the  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean.  In  his  brilliant  book  on  The  Early 
Age  of  Greece  Professor  Ridgeway  has  made  it  highly 
probable  that  Homer's  Achaeans  belonged  to  this 
conquering  northern  race,  before  whom  the  indige- 
nous "  Pelasgians,"  represented  most  faithfully  by  the 
Athenians  and  lonians  generally,  were  forced  to 
bow.  Traces  of  northern  origin  remain  in  Greek 
traditions  of  places  of  ceaseless  sunshine,  and  places  of 
perpetual  darkness  where  the  air  was  full  of  wool — of 
floating  rocks  (icebergs  ?)  that  crashed  together  over 
the  sea — of  the  quest  of  the  "golden-horned  hind," 
which  can  only  be  the  reindeer.  Baltic  amber  has 
been  found  in  Greek  tombs.  The  study  of  manners 
and  customs  and  beliefs  tells  the  same  tale.  It  is 
remarkable  also  that  some  conspicuous  heroes  of 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  have  names  which  cannot  be 


36  Language 

accounted  for  as  Greek,  whereas  native  Greek  names 
are  almost  always  transparent  in  their  etymology. 
It  is  interesting  to  add  to  Professor  Ridgeway's 
point  an  unconscious  confirmation  from  the  great 
philologist  August  Pick,  who  found  a  congener 
for  Achilles  in  the  old  German  name  Agilnlfs. 
Dr  Ridgeway  believes  that  the  same  origin  can  be 
asserted  for  the  sturdy  Sabine  race,  who  formed  the 
"  patrician  "  nucleus  of  the  early  population  of  Rome, 
and  whose  kindred  in  later  ages  made  so  brave  a 
struggle  for  independence  against  the  growing  power 
of  the  great  city.  We  can  probably  trace  the 
same  strain  further  east.  Cyrus  and  his  victorious 
Persians  present  many  of  the  characteristics  which 
we  note  in  the  patricians  of  Rome  and  the  Achacans 
of  Greece,  and  in  all  these  we  have  the  same  sub- 
sequent history:  a  comparatively  small  host  of 
warriors,  greatly  superior  in  physique  and  equipment, 
easily  conquers  a  weaker  population,  and  in  a  few  gene- 
rations loses  most  of  its  distinctive  features  by  inter- 
marriage with  the  indigenous  race.  There  are  traces 
still  remaining  of  these  kinsfolk  of  our  own  who  in  dis- 
tant ages  overran  the  rich  lands  of  southern  Europe 
and  western  Asia,  inhabited  by  races  physical!}-  weaker 
but  more  intellectual  than  themselves.  In  India  the 
rigid  preservation  of  caste  barriers  enables  observers 
still  to  note  the  decidedly  northern  physiognomy  of 
some  representatives  of  ancient  royal  houses.  And 
among  the  Ossetes,  an  Iranian-speaking  folk  in  the 
centre  of  the  Caucasus,  modern  travellers  have  been 


and  Primitive  History  37 

curiously  agreed  in  noting  customs  strongly  remind- 
ing them  of  Germany. 

Between  these  two1  widely  different  races  we  shall 
find  immense  differences  of  customs  and  culture. 
The  question  will  of  course  be  asked,  which  of  the 
two  races  represents  the  primitive  Indogermanic 
people?  It  may  be  doubted  whether  we  shall  ever 
be  able  to  answer  such  a  question.  If  we  must 
choose,  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  the  northern  race 
has  the  prior  claim,  and  the  affinities  between  Indo- 
germanic and  Finnish  speech,  accepted  as  proved  by 
the  high  authority  of  Dr  Sweet,  undeniably  make  in 
this  direction.  On  the  same  side  stands  Dr  Ridge- 
way's  proof  that  the  Achaeans  brought  with  them 
the  worship  of  Zeus,  an  unquestionably  Indogerman 
deity,  while  the  indigenous  Poseidon  bears  a  name 
which  has  so  far  defied  analysis.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  non-Achaean  Greek  and  the  non-Sabine 
Latin  only  differ  dialectically  from  the  language  of 
the  invaders,  so  far  as  we  can  disentangle  them.  The 
same  conditions  seem  to  prevail  in  Media,  where  the 
non-Aryan'2  population  cannot  be  shown  to  have 
spoken  a  language  radically  different  from  that  of 

1  The  blond  northern  race  is  here  spoken  of  for  convenience  as 
one.  Hut  the  conquerors  of  southern  Europe  included  not  only  long- 
headed but  also  short-headed  men,  who  lived  in  great  numbers  in 
south  Germany  ;  so  that  there  were  really  two  different  stocks  among 
them.  So  Professor  Kidgeway  informs  me. 

-  I  am  of  course  using  the  term  Aryan  in  its  strict  sense,  as  the  self- 
chosen  name  of  the  family  speaking  the  closely-related  Indian  and 
Iranian  languages. 


38  Language 

their  Aryan  conquerors.  It  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  race  and  language  cannot  be  treated  as  neces- 
sarily going  together.  Two  totally  distinct  races 
may  very  well  speak  closely  related  languages,  and 
the  difference  of  speech  may  be  the  result  of  the 
fact  that  one  race  learnt  the  language  as  a  foreign 
idiom.  But  if  the  Mediterranean  race  did  learn  their 
language  from  the  peoples  of  the  North,  it  must  have 
been  in  a  prehistoric  period  at  which  it  is  absolutely 
impossible  for  us  to  arrive  \vith  our  present  methods. 
The  period  of  this  assumed  process  antedates  the 
dialectic  division  between  the  eastern  and  western 
Indogermanic  languages,  a  division  which  goes  back 
as  far  as  our  knowledge  can  take  us.  The  typically 
northern  Keltic  and  Germanic  lie  in  this  respect  on 
the  same  side  as  the  typically  Mediterranean  Latin 
and  "  Pelasgian "  Greek.  It  is  better  therefore  to 
acquiesce  in  our  ignorance,  and  say  that  both  races 
spoke  Indogermanic  at  the  very  earliest  period  to 
which  our  science  can  approach. 

And  where  did  these  primitive  people  live  ? 
"Somewhere  in  Asia"  was  the  answer  universally 
given  till  comparatively  lately.  Whether  the  Book 
of  Genesis  was  supposed  to  demand  this,  or  whether 
it  resulted  from  a  general  idea  of  the  fitness  of  things, 
is  rather  hard  to  say.  In  1851  R.  G.  Latham — of 
whom  as  in  private  duty  bound  I  must  chronicle  that 
lie  was  a  Fellow  of  King's  College,  Cambridge — pro- 
pounded the  revolutionary  view  that  the  home  was 
to  be  found  in  Europe.  His  reasons  centred  on  the 


and  Primitive  History  39 

antecedent  probability  that  the  dog  would  wag  the 
tail  and  not  the  tail  wag  the  dog.  He  was  scoffed  at 
as  a  "  crack-brained  Englishman "  by  the  superior 
Germans.  But  the  whirligig  of  time  brings  its  re- 
venges, and  there  is  hardly  a  German  now  with  a 
reputation  to  lose  who  does  not  hold  with  Latham. 
There  is  one  very  interesting  exception,  that  great 
philologist  Johannes  Schmidt,  recently  deceased,  who 
invented  an  argument  for  the  Asiatic  hypothesis,  in- 
sufficient indeed  to  bear  the  weight  he  laid  upon  it, 
but  well  worth  respectful  consideration.  He  pointed 
out  that  there  were  in  European  languages  consider- 
able traces  of  a  sexagesimal  system  of  numeration 
crossing  the  decimal — the  peculiar  formation  of  our 
own  eleven  and  twelve,  and  the  Germanic  "  long 
hundred,"  for  120,  will  serve  as  examples, — and  he 
argued  that  this  must  be  due  to  a  very  early  contact 
with  the  Babylonians1,  with  whom  60  was  the  pivot 
of  the  numeral  system.  It  seems  clear  that  we  should 
call  our  European  peculiarity  duodecimal  rather  than 
sexagesimal,  and  that  other  causes  must  be  accepted 

1  Schmidt  throws  in  other  supposed  borrowings  from  Babylonian. 
The  most  plausible  of  these  is  the  Greek  TrAe/cus  "axe,"  Sanskrit 
parafus,  compared  with  Assyrian  pilaqqu.  I  cannot  feel  satisfied  with 
his  account  of  the  relation  between  the  Assyrian  q  and  the  Sanskrit 
sh  sound,  and  I  think  this  is  to  be  added  to  the  remarkably  large 
category  of  purely  accidental  similarities.  TreXe/cus  and  parafiis  will 
suit  the  root  pclck  (Latin  flecto,  our_/?«y),  and  the  original  meaning  may 
have  been  a  knife  for  cutting  hides.  Schmidt's  doctrine  has  received 
a  serious  blow  from  the  other  side  in  l)r  Ridgeway's  proof  that  the 
sexagesimal  system  was  of  quite  recent  date  in  Babylonia. 

M. 


4O  Language 

for  its  appearance  than  that  which  Schmidt  de- 
manded, but  we  may  still  admire  the  ingenuity  of 
the  only  serious  argument  which  recent  years  have 
brought  to  the  support  of  a  theory  once  taken  for 
granted  as  an  axiom. 

We  have  no  time  to  indicate  the  various  lines  of 
evidence  which  converge  on  northern  Europe  as  the 
most  probable  centre  of  radiation  for  the  emigrations 
of  prehistoric  ages.  It  must  be  carefully  noted  that 
we  only  seek  to  determine  the  home  of  the  Indo- 
germans  at  the  latest  period  at  which  they  were 
speaking  mutually  intelligible  language.  Of  their 
earlier  home  and  culture  Language  can  naturally 
tell  us  nothing  whatever  ;  and  if  other  methods  of 
research  decide  that  our  forefathers  ultimately  started 
from  Asia  or  from  the  North  Pole,  our  science  cannot 
say  no,  For  the  period  to  which  Language  leads  us, 
a  northern  origin  seems  at  least  favoured  by  the 
prominence  of  winter  and  cold.  Snow  is  certainly 
Indogermanic,  and  possibly  ice1  as  well,  while  winter 
was  known  by  the  name  found  in  the  Latin  Jdcmps 
and  the  Sanskrit  Himalaya.  ("  abode  of  snow1').  Spring 
also  (Latin  iw)  was  a  very  well-marked  season. 
An  argument  has  been  found  in  the  names  of  trees 
which  are  shown  by  language  to  have  been  known 
to  the  Indogermans.  The  oak  and  the  pine,  and  less 

1  The  Zend  isi,  if  we  might  slightly  alter  the  sibilant  in  the  one 
place  where  it  occurs,  suits  the  (lermanic  ice  very  well,  and  an  attesta- 
tion from  Aryan  and  Germanic  means  more  than  one  from  any  other 
two  Indogermanic  languages,  as  these  are  the  farthest  apart. 


and  Primitive  History  41 

conspicuously  the  willow  and  the  birch,  are  decisively 
proved  to  have  existed  in  the  primitive  period, and  these 
four  are  said  not  to  be  found  together  outside  Europe1. 
The  argument  is  complicated  by  the  extraordinary 
propensity  of  the  tree-names  to  change  their  meaning. 
When  people  migrated  into  a  region  where  a  par- 
ticular tree  was  rare  or  absent,  they  would  use  its 
name  for  "  tree  "  in  general,  or  for  some  other  tree. 
Thus  in  Italy  fraxinus,  the  cognate  of  our  birch,  is 
used  to  denote  the  ash.  I  may  mention  two  ex- 
amples of  the  methods  by  which  we  may  fix  the 
original  meaning  of  these  words.  Tree  means  "oak" 
in  Greek  and  Keltic,  "  wood  "  or  "  tree  "  in  Germanic 
and  Albanian,  "larch"  in  Latin.  The  cognate  tar, 
with  one  of  similar  meaning  in  Lithuanian,  decides  us 
for  a  resinous  tree,  presumably  the  pine,  as  the 
original.  Fir  means  "  oak "  in  Latin  (guercus),  a 
kind  of  fig-tree  in  Sanskrit,  and  it  has  indeterminate 
derivatives  in  Keltic,  Gothic,  Lithuanian,  etc.  But  a 
word  for  the  Thunder-god  derived  from  it  argues  for 
"  oak "  as  the  earliest  meaning,  for  the  oak-tree  and 
the  thunder  were  old  associates,  as  we  shall  see  later. 
Pursuing  our  enquiry,  we  find  that  the  Indo- 
germans  were  familiar  with  the  sea  (mere,  Latin 
mare).  The  older  investigators  were  most  unwarrant- 
ably sceptical  on  this  point.  Holding  as  they  did  an 
exaggerated  view  of  the  importance  of  the  Aryan 


1   So  Ilirt,  an  able  philologist.      But  an  excellent  botanist  tells  me 
he  is  wrong.      How  necessary  it  is  to  "verify  our  references  "  ! 

4—2 


42  Language 

branch  in  all  such  enquiries,  they  denied  Indogerman 
antiquity  to  words  which  were  not  to  be  found  in 
Indian  or  Iranian  languages.  Since  Aryan  is  now 
found  to  be  closely  united  to  its  neighbours,  the 
Slavonic  on  one  side  and  the  Armenian  on  the  other, 
we  cannot  lay  the  same  stress  on  the  absence  of 
Aryan  attestation.  The  word  mere  has  in  its  form 
strong  witness  to  its  high  antiquity ;  and,  the  Aryan 
migration  being  entirely  inland,  they  may  easily  have 
lost  the  word  before  they  reached  the  Caspian  or  other 
great  sheet  of  water.  I  cannot  stay  to  argue  the  case 
for  the  Baltic  as  the  sea  of  the  Indogermans.  I  need 
only  point  out  that  it  meets  all  the  conditions,  so 
long  as  we  do  not  insist  on  the  immediate  contact 
of  the  whole  people  with  the  seaboard,  but  conceive 
of  them  as  spreading  inland  to  the  south-east  and 
south-west  in  two  streams  as  described  already.  That 
the  converging  point  on  the  Baltic  is  still  the  home 
of  the  Lithuanians  is  itself  no  mean  argument,  for  this 
people  retains  to  the  present  day  a  most  dispropor- 
tionate amount  of  primitive  features  in  its  language, 
which  is  at  once  accounted  for  if  we  take  them  to  be 
descendants  of  the  original  folk  occupying  still  the 
original  home.  The  region  of  our  hypothesis  still 
harbours  the  wolf  and  the  bear,  beasts  thoroughly 
familiar  to  the  primitive  people,  who  knew  nothing 
(so  far  as  language  can  tell  us)  of  the  Asiatic  elephant 
or  tiger.  There  are  bees  to  supply  honey  for 
making  mead,  on  which  I  fear  the  primitive  Indo- 
german had  learnt  to  make  himself  drunk  to  an 


and  Primitive  History  43 

extent  quite  worthy  of  his  noble  descendants,  the 
heirs  of  all  the  intervening  ages.  Gigantic  trees 
were  there  to  be  felled  and  hollowed  by  fire  to 
make  the  "dug-outs"  in  which  they  navigated  the 
streams  ;  and  in  the  vast  and  awesome  woods  we 
can  picture  them  worshipping  Dicus  Perqiinos,  Zeus 
of  the  oak,  with  rites  not  greatly  differing  from 
those  of  the  Druids  in  historical  times. 

From  this  centre  we  may  conceive  the  Indo- 
germans  spreading  as  their  numbers  grew,  and  their 
dialects  gradually  developing  in  the  way  I  tried  to 
describe  in  the  former  lecture.  It  would  naturally 
happen  that  some  of  the  tribes  thus  formed  would 
remain  in  contact  with  one  another  long  after  they 
had  ceased  to  be  in  touch  with  their  other  kin,  so 
that  new  culture  characteristics  and  new  terms  to 
describe  them  spread  throughout  a  limited  area 
without  affecting  those  who  had  detached  themselves 
before  these  new  departures  took  place.  A  good 
example  may  be  found  in  the  evidence  mentioned 
earlier  in  this  lecture,  connecting  the  common  culture 
of  the  Italians,  Kelts,  and  Germans  with  the  period 
of  the  Swiss  Lake-dwellers,  who  differ  from  the 
earlier  Indogermans  by  the  prominence  of  fish  in 
their  diet1. 

1  I  should  remark  here  that  Professor  Ridgeway,  speaking  as  an 
archaeologist,  pronounces  primitive  man,  wherever  found,  largely  a  fish- 
eater.  I  am  dealing  only  with  the  evidence  of  language,  and  if  the 
archaeologists  press  this  point  we  must  of  course  assume  either  (i)  that 
fish  (Latin  pistil,,  Old  Irish  iasc)  was  lost  in  the  other  five  main 


44  Language 

It  remains  for  us  to  ask  what  light  our  science 
can  cast  on  the  arts  and  accomplishments,  the  family 
life  and  the  religion  of  this  primitive  people.  It  is 
usual  to  gauge  the  progress  of  nations  in  early  stages 
of  development  by  the  extent  of  their  acquaintance 
with  metals.  The  test  does  not  pretend  to  be  com- 
plete, for  it  is  obvious  that  a  people  still  in  the  Stone 
Age  may  be  more  advanced  and  more  civilised  than 
one  which  has  learnt  something  of  the  use  of  metals. 
But  practically  the  test  is  found  quite  good  enough 
for  its  purpose,  and  it  is  therefore  the  best  course  for 
us  to  ask  first  what  was  the  condition  of  the  Indo- 
germans  in  this  respect.  We  find  that  there  is  fairly 
decisive  evidence  that  they  were  acquainted  with 
copper,  which  they  knew  by  two  names,  one  the 
ultimate  origin  of  our  word  iron,  the  other  possibly 
a  derivative  from  the  adjective  red.  The  only  other 
metal  they  could  have  known  is  gold,  which  like 
copper  is  often  found  on  the  surface  pure.  The 
Germans,  Letts  and  Slavs — -contiguous  peoples,  be 
it  noted — must  have  learnt  its  use  very  early,  and 
agreed  to  name  it  by  its  present  name,  derived  from 
the  root  of  yellow.  Some  rather  tempting  Sanskrit 
evidence  for  this  word  has  been  alleged,  but  it  is 

Indogerman  dialects,  especially  by  those  whose  migrations  took  them 
across  the  steppes,  or  to  seas  where  the  tish  were  unappetising, — or 
(2)  that  the  Indogermans,  as  in  the  ease  of  "  one  "  and  "  hand  " 
(p.  33),  possessed  the  tiling  but  not  the  name  in  common.  It  seems 
to  me,  however,  at  least  a  striking  coincidence  \\\z\.  fish  belongs  exclu- 
sively to  these  three  contiguous  peoples,  who  may  so  well  have 
radiated  from  the  Lake-dwellers'  area. 


and  Primitive  History  45 

hardly  to  be  relied  upon  ;  and,  if  it  were,  it  only 
involves  extending  the  chain  of  contiguous  tribes 
possessing  the  name  one  more  link  to  the  east.  At 
first  sight,  the  case  for  silver  appears  stronger,  inas- 
much as  Aryans,  Armenians,  Italians  and  Kelts  use 
the  same  word,  while  Greek  has  the  same  root  with 
the  suffix  changed.  But  on  further  examination  we 
find  that  it  only  involves  the  coincident  use  of  a  word 
for  "white,"  to  which  not  very  recondite  piece  of 
nomenclature  the  great  wits  of  various  tribes  may 
well  have  jumped  independently.  For  other  metals 
no  semblance  of  a  case  can  be  made  out.  It  will  be 
obvious  that  the  absence  of  a  common  name  for  the 
various  metals  is  in  this  case  a  very  serious  argument, 
for  though  a  word  for  "  hand  "  may  as  we  have  seen 
be  missing  without  our  drawing  the  inference  we 
draw  here,  we  have  the  best  possible  evidence  from 
archaeology  that  the  Inclogermans  did  possess  hands, 
evidence  which  is  conspicuous  by  its  absence  in  the 
case  of  the  metals.  We  conclude  that  the  Indo- 
germans  were  in  the  Neolithic  stage  of  culture, 
slightly  modified  by  their  use  of  copper.  This  fact 
incidentally  supports  our  decision  against  the  Asiatic 
home  ;  for  the  Semites,  while  still  one  undivided 
people,  knew  gold,  silver  and  copper,  and  it  is  very 
hard  to  believe  that  the  Inclogermans  would  have 
remained  ignorant  of  all  but  copper,  had  they  started 
from  a  country  comparatively  near  the  Semite  home, 
especially  if,  as  Schmidt's  theory  demands,  they  had 
actual  contact  with  the  Semites  in  a  very  early  period. 


46  Language 

We  soon  find  that  dulce  domum  was  an  idea 
familiar  to  the  earliest  Indogermans,  for  domus  (our 
timber,  German  Zimmer)  is  a  word  found  everywhere. 
It  seems  moreover  to  connote  "home"  as  well  as 
"  house,"  for  it  is  used  to  describe  the  household  as 
well  as  the  dwelling,  and  the  "house-master"  and 
"  house-mistress  "  (cf.  the  Greek  word  from  which  we 
get  our  despot)  took  their  names  from  it.  We  must 
leave  the  archaeologists  the  last  word  as  to  the 
character  of  the  house.  Language  supports  the  as- 
sumption that  there  was  one  room  specially  named 
from  the  central  hearth,  with  a  large  opening  in  the 
roof  above  to  let  the  smoke  escape.  Oven  and  cook 
are  both  primitive  words,  but  we  must  not  let  our 
ideas  approach  too  near  the  processes  of  a  modern 
kitchener  ;  an  earthen  pot  hung  from  three  sticks  over 
the  fire  is  perhaps  as  likely  as  anything.  The  fact 
that  the  wagon  was  known,  with  axle  and  wheels 
presumably  in  one  piece,  has  suggested  that  the  Indo- 
germans were  gipsies,  differing  from  their  modern 
descendants  only  in  the  inferior  finish  of  their  caravan. 
But  there  is  no  necessary  connexion,  and  wagons 
originally  used  for  living  in  may  well  have  been 
retained  for  agricultural  use.  That  agriculture  was 
practised,  probably  side  by  side  with  the  keeping  of 
flocks  and  herds,  for  which  con.',  steer  and  civc  are 
primitive  words,  seems  certainly  established.  Corn, 
and  the  German  Gcrste,  are  well-attested  primitive 
words,  and  there  are  too  many  others  of  the  kind  to 
make  it  probable  that  the  Indogermans  only  collected 


and  Primitive  History  47 

wild-grass  seeds.  The  words  qncr)i  and  mill  are 
equally  old,  and  so  are  the  verbs  car  and  sow,  and 
probably  the  name  of  the  finished  article,  loaf.  The 
names  for  "  plough  "  often  tell  their  own  tale  by  their 
connexion  with  words  meaning  "  branch."  The  older 
scholars'  hesitation  to  accept  agriculture  as  Indo- 
germanic  arose  largely  from  the  fact  that  most  of 
these  words  are  either  absent  or  have  become  colour- 
less ("move,"  "go,"  and  the  like)  in  the  Aryan 
languages.  But  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should 
allow  Aryan  a  decisive  \vcight  which  we  should  never 
think  of  granting  to  any  other  single  branch  of  the 
family ;  and  when  we  have  recognised  that  the 
Aryans'  migration  to  their  present  homes  took  them 
across  the  steppes  we  have  at  once  the  sufficient 
reason  for  their  losing  words  denoting  processes  of 
agriculture,  which  could  be  rarely  applied. 

It  is  naturally  impossible  here  to  attempt  a  com- 
plete sketch  of  the  life  of  this  prehistoric  people. 
I  might  mention  that  they  had  discovered  arts  to 
which  the  words  i^cai'c  and  seiu  attached  themselves  : 
of  course  they  would  be  in  the  most  elementary  stage 
of  development.  What  gives  us  a  yet  higher  idea  of 
their  progress  is  the  apparent  fact  that  they  achieved 
a  very  near  approximation  to  the  length  of  the  solar 
year.  (  Year,  like  inontJi,  is  primitive,  but  probably 
meant  "  spring,"  as  does  sometimes  its  Greek  cognate 
from  which  comes  the  word  "  hour.")  Twelve  lunar 
months,  354  days,  seem  to  have  been  the  first  approxi- 
mation, which  would  soon  be  found  to  be  too  short. 


48  Language 

A  "  little  year "  of  twelve  days  brought  the  year  to 
what  is  practically  correct.  We  find  these  twelve  days 
kept  with  special  ceremonial  at  the  two  extremes  of 
the  Indogermanic  area  ;  and  each  day  up  to  "Twelfth 
Night "  was  supposed  to  forecast  the  weather  of  a 
corresponding  month  in  the  year  following. 

The  family  conditions  of  the  Indogermans  claim 
our  attention  before  we  begin  to  describe  their  religion, 
the  last  topic  on  which  we  shall  have  time  to  dwell. 
The  very  large  number  of  relationship  words  strikes 
every  observer.  Father,  mother,  son,  daughter,  brother, 
sister,  are  our  share  in  the  primitive  inheritance  ;  and 
to  these  may  be  added  words  for  grandson  and  grand- 
daughter, son's  wife,  husband's  father  and  mother, 
husband's  brother  and  sister  (?),  and  perhaps  grand- 
father, stepmother,  uncle,  son-in-law,  brothers'  wives, 
sisters'  husbands.  The  relationships  seem  mostly  to 
be  on  the  male  side,  but  there  are  possible  survivals 
of  a  "  matriarchate,"  and  in  any  case  the  position  of 
women  seems  to  have  been  passably  good  for  so  early 
a  stage  of  civilisation.  There  was  a  great  difference 
between  the  North  European  and  the  Mediterranean 
races  in  this  respect.  Everyone  notices  the  extra- 
ordinary contrast  between  the  position  of  women  at 
Athens,  in  the  age  of  her  greatest  fame,  and  that  of 
the  Homeric  women,  some  six  centuries  earlier. 
The  apparent  degeneration  is  explained  at  once  by 
Professor  Ridgeway's  theory,  for  the  Achaean  women 
are  in  just  the  same  social  condition  as  those  of 
ancient  Germanv,  as  described  by  Tacitus,  which  is 


and  Primitive  History  49 

also  reflected  in  the  life  of  the  patrician  matrons  at 
Rome.  It  was  not  from  the  northern  invaders  that 
the  slavery  of  women  in  India  came.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  suggestive  that  widow  is  a  primitive  word, 
while  there  is  none  to  describe  the  widower:  we  may 
probably  infer  that  the  widow  was  at  any  rate  not 
re-married. 

The  clan  was  apparently  the  highest  political  unit. 
The  wife  would  be  brought  in  by  purchase  from 
another  clan  :  the  word  wed  is  specially  associated 
with  this  purchase-money.  The  slaying  of  a  member 
of  the  clan — originally  denoted  in  Italy  by  the  word 
parricide  (which  only  popular  etymology  connected 
with  pater-']  —  imposed  a  special  obligation  on  the 
survivors.  The  northern  race  were  content  to  exact 
a  wergild  from  the  homicide  or  his  clan  ;  but  the 
Mediterranean  people,  believing  as  they  did  that 
the  shed  blood  cried  from  the  ground,  and  that  the 
unsatisfied  spirit  was  always  near  the  living  and 
powerful  to  harm,  insisted  on  blood  revenge,  nor  has 
the  practice  died  out  in  our  own  day. 

We  have  come  to  a  point  at  which  it  is  natural  to 
go  on  to  the  investigation  of  Indogennanic  religion. 
The  wide  differences  of  view  which  have  been  held 
on  this  subject  suggest  that  a  solution  is  most  likely 
to  be  found  on  the  lines  of  Professor  Ridgeway's 
fruitful  theory.  There  arc  plentiful  traces  of  ancestor- 
worship.  The  Romans  h;id  their  Manes,  and  the 
Greeks  never  lost  their  deep-seated  conviction  that 
the  souls  of  the  dead  dwelt  in  or  near  their  tombs, 


50  Language 

mighty  to  help  or  hurt  those  whose  most  sacred 
duty  was  to  care  for  their  ancestors'  graves,  and  give 
the  shades  a  momentary  taste  of  renewed  life  by 
drink-offerings  of  blood  poured  through  a  little 
opening  into  the  tomb.  So  indestructible  was  this 
belief,  that  in  the  island  of  Thera  we  find  a  number 
of  Christian  tombs  with  the  Greek  inscription  "  The 
angel  of  so-and-so":  the  old  pagan  ancestor-spirit 
had  a  new  lease  of  life  when  christened  as  a  guardian 
angel.  On  the  other  hand  we  find  that  the  Achaeans 
burnt  their  dead,  and  believed  that  the  spirit  after  the 
burning  flew  away  to  the  Isles  of  the  Blest,  never  to 
return.  The  mixture  of  these  two  contrary  ideas 
produced  inextricable  confusion  in  the  eschatology 
of  the  later  Greeks  ;  but  among  the  kindred  of  the 
Achaeans  in  Northern  Europe  we  find  their  ideas  in 
their  original  purity.  There  is  moreover  from  all 
quarters  evidence  of  nature-worship  as  the  creed 
of  original  speakers  of  Indogermanic  languages. 
Classical  writers  portray  for  us  the  religion  of  the 
ancient  Germans  and  Gauls  and  Persians,  and  the 
portraits  agree  in  the  prominence  assigned  to  the  sun 
and  moon,  and  to  the  associated  worship  of  heaven 
and  earth,  which  latter  were  regarded  as  father  and 
mother  of  all.  These  ideas  are  reflected  in  the  one 
divine  name  which  is  common  to  many  branches  of 
the  Indogermanic  family.  The  Greek  Zeus,  the 
Italian  Jove,  the  Germanic  deity  whose  name  we 
preserve  in  Tnes-day,  answer  to  the  old  Vedic 
Dyaus,  whose  worship  evidently  failed  to  take 


and  Primitive  History  5  i 

root  among  the  peoples  of  India  conquered  by  the 
northern  warriors,  for  even  in  the  earliest  Veclas  he 
is  a  name  and  little  more.  I  am  myself  tempted 
to  conjecture  that  when  Herodotus  tells  us  of  the 
Persian  popular  faith,  and  observes  that  they  "  called 
the  whole  vault  of  heaven  Zeus,"  he  was  not  merely 
using  the  familiar  name  of  the  Greek  supreme  deity, 
to  describe  the  supreme  deity  of  another  people,  but 
reproducing  the  very  word  he  had  heard  in  Persia1. 
Closely  akin  to  this  name  is  the  general  word  for 
God,  whence  the  Latin  dens  and  divinus  descend2. 
The  name  presumably  means  "  shining,"  and  fits  the 
nature  deity  of  the  northern  race,  as  completely  as 
the  Greek  $609,  if  its  congener  is  really  to  be  sought 
in  Lithuanian  and  German  words  for  "  ghost "  or 
"  spirit,"  fits  the  ancestor-worship  of  the  Mediterranean 
peoples.  It  is  impossible  for  us  to  enter  further  here 
upon  the  features  which  language  and  archaeology 
combine  to  authenticate  for  early  times.  One  in- 
teresting point  may  be  noted  with  reference  to  the 

1  Ilcrod.  I.  131  TOV  KIIK\OI>  TTO.VTO.  Tou  ovpavov  Aid  Ka\eovres.     The 
old  word  for  "  heaven  "  probably  survives  in  one  passage  of  the  Avesta; 
and,  as  the  present  writer  has  tried  to  show,  in  a  forthcoming  article 
on  the  religion  of  Persia,   the  common  people  probably  kept  up   the 
old  nature-worship  long  after  the  court  had  adopted  the  reform  con- 
nected with  the   great  name   of  Zoroaster.     If   the   name   Dyaus  still 
survived,   a  Greek  could  only  suppose  it  Zeus,   especially  if  he  heard 
it  in  the  accusative  case. 

2  And,    according    to    one    excellent    authority,     Tues(day),    which 
would  thus  become  in  its  origin  a  common  and  not  a  proper  noun.     But 
the  older   view   cannot  be   regarded  as   conclusively   ruled  out  by  the 
phonetic  objection  raised  against  it. 


52  Language 

god  who  seems  clearly  marked  out  as  supreme,  at 
any  rate  among  the  northern  folk.  It  may  be  re- 
garded as  fairly  certain  that  Dieus  had  not  only  the 
title  "  Father "  but  the  further  appellative  Perqimos, 
"  of  the  Oak."  The  latter  name  has  become  a  title 
of  a  rain  or  thunder  god  among  the  Vedic  Indians 
(probably),  the  Norwegians — who  applied  it  to  the 
mother  of  Thor — and  the  Lithuanians,  while  among 
the  Albanians  it  denotes  "  God  "  or  <(  heaven."  We 
have  from  Homer  evidence  of  a  sacred  oak  in 
Dodona,  where  special  priests  of  Zeus  ministered, 
"with  unwashen  feet  and  making  their  bed  on  the 
ground  " — instances  of  the  holiness  of  dirt  which  may 
be  abundantly  paralleled  in  the  Fakirs  of  Hinduism 
and  other  religions.  The  northern  cult  of  Zeus  was, 
on  Dr  Ridgeway's  theory,  brought  with  them  by  the 
invading  Achaeans  through  Epirus  to  Greece  proper, 
and  the  shrine  of  Dodona  preserves  this  worship  in 
its  last  stage  before  it  was  fused  and  harmonised  with 
the  cult  of  Poseidon  and  other  deities  which  existed 
in  Greece  before  the  invasion.  The  combination  of 
Sky  and  Oak  is  not  an  obvious  one  to  our  minds, 
but  to  the  primitive  man  the  connexion  was  easy. 
The  Sky-god  sent  the  lightning  which  blasted  the 
Oak,  the  chief  of  trees,  and  presumably  the  most 
abundant  in  the  region  where  the  cult  arose.  A 
peculiar  sanctity  was  always,  even  in  much  later 
ages,  attached  to  objects  and  persons  struck  by 
lightning,  and  the  blasted  oak  was  considered  to  be 
the  special  abode  of  the  Sky-god  who  had  thus  come 


and  Primitive  Plistory  53 

to  his  own.  Apart  from  the  sanctity  of  the  oak,  the 
fact  that  words  for  "  acorn  "  are  widely  attested,  and 
have  primitive  appearance,  would  seem  to  suggest 
that  the  tree  provided  food  for  man  as  well  as  beast. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  how  the  "  rain  from  heaven 
and  fruitful  seasons,"  declared  by  St  Paul  to  be  God's 
witness  of  Himself  to  the  heathen  world,  produced 
among  the  remote  ancestors  of  those  to  whom  he 
spoke  a  cult  of  the  sky  that  gave  rain  and  the  tree 
that  bore  fruit.  And  "the  times  of  that  ignorance 
God  overlooked,"  well  pleased — we  are  encouraged  to 
believe — that  even  by  the  imperfect  nature-worship 
of  the  "Sky  Father"  He  had  led  His  children  to 
know  that  they  were  "  His  offspring." 

The  other  strain  of  primitive  religion,  the  ancestor- 
worship,  is  hardly  supported  at  all  by  evidence  from 
language.  The  nearest  approach  to  a  common  word 
for  "  spirit "  is  seen  in  the  cognates  of  the  Greek 
tJicos,  already  noticed1.  The  evidence  is  decidedly  less 
satisfactory  than  that  which  proves  nature-worship. 
Nearly  all  the  Indogermanic  peoples,  however,  seem 
to  have  practised  this  cult,  even  though  they  may  not 
have  used  common  words  for  it.  The  fusion  of  the 
two  conceptions  of  religion  may  well  be  as  old  as 
the  spread  of  the  common  language  over  two  very 
distinct  races,  and  in  this  case  the  science  of  language 
cannot  come  to  the  aid  of  history.  It  will  remain 
only  a  theory,  made  plausible  rather  by  archaeology 
and  history  than  by  linguistic  evidence,  that  ancestor- 

1  See  Schrader,  Reallexikon,  p.  28. 


54        Language  and  Primitive  History 

worship  was  originally  the  religion  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean people,  and  filtered  northwards  just  as  the 
worship  of  Dieus  Perqunos  spread  over  the  south. 
The  two  strains  met  conspicuously  in  the  Greek 
religion,  and  very  evidently  played  their  part  in 
preparing  the  Greek  mind  for  its  ultimate  work  in 
the  propagation  of  a  world  religion. 

So  must  end  this  brief  and  fragmentary  intro- 
duction to  a  fascinating  study.  That  many  phases 
of  primitive  Indogermanic  life,  on  which  the  evidence 
of  speech  is  attainable,  have  been  entirely  passed 
over,  while  those  that  are  not  passed  over  have  only  a 
few  leading  features  indicated,  is  obvious  enough,  and 
belongs  to  the  conditions  under  which  the  present 
task  is  undertaken.  But  I  hope  it  will  be  found  that 
the  selections  given  will  whet  the  appetite  for  more, 
and  that  even  this  meagre  sketch  will  do  something 
to  show  how  wide  and  how  suggestive  a  study  lies 
behind  the  words  we  unthinkingly  use  in  daily  life. 


55 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

A  short  list  of  books  on  the  subjects  sketched  in  these 
lectures,  available  for  English  readers,  may  be  found  useful. 
Comparatively  few  of  them  will  appeal  to  the  general  reader, 
but  the  student  will  find  them  within  his  grasp  if  he  has 
a  fair  acquaintance  with  the  structure  of  Latin  and  Greek 
and  English.  The  books  are  classified,  the  easiest  being 
put  first  in  each  section,  with  a  few  notes  on  each. 

A.     'I'm-:  STUDY  OF  LANGUAGE  (GENERAL). 

Sweet,   II.      .77/1?  History  of  Language.     (Temple   Primers.) 
Dent,  1899. 

Though  only  a  primer,  this  little  book  contains  a  large 
amount  of  original  matter,  especially  on  the  relations  of  the 
Finnish  and  other  languages  to  the  Indogermanic  family. 

Strong,    Logeman  and  Wheeler.  —  Introduction  to  the  Study 
of  the  History  of  Language.      Longman,  1891. 

An  adaptation  of  the  difficult,  but  most  important,  work 
by  H.  Paul,  on  Principles  of  Language-.    (The  English  trans- 
lation of  this  latter  work,  by  Strong,  is  not  recommended.) 
M.  5 


5  6  Bibliography 

Whitney,  W.  D. — Life  and  Growth  of  Language.    (Internat. 
Science  Series.)     King,  1875. 

Due  allowance  must  of  course  be  made  for  the  immense 
development  of  the  subject  since  the  publication  of  this 
work  ;  but  the  great  American  scholar's  teaching  in  many 
ways  cannot  go  out  of  date. 

Oertel,    H. — Lectures  on  the  Study  of  Language.     Arnold, 
1901. 

By  far  the  best  general  account  of  the  subject,  acute, 
correct,  and  original.  Like  the  last,  this  book  is  due  to  an 
American  scholar. 

Giles,  P. — "  Philology"  (in  new  Supplement  to  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica].     See  under  C. 

B.     ETYMOLOGY. 

Skeat,  W.  W. — Primer  of  English  Etymology.      Clarendon 
Press,  1892. 

,,         ,,       — Principles   of  English    Etymology.      2    vols. 
Clarendon  Press,    1891,    1892. 

,,          ,,       — Etymological    Dictionary      of    the    English 
Language.   3rd  ed.   Clarendon  Press,  1898. 

,,          ,,       — Concise  do.     Latest  edition  (rewritten),  1901. 

For  practical  use  this  last  supersedes  everything  else,  con- 
taining as  it  does  the  matured  results  of  many  years'  work 
by  the  leading  English  authority  on  Middle  English. 


Bibliography  5  7 

Kluge,    F.,    and    Lutz,    F. — English   Etymology;    a    select 

glossary.      Blackie  and  Son,  1899. 

A  much  smaller  book  than  Skeat's  Concise  Dictionary, 
but  exceedingly  sound  and  reliable. 

Taylor,  I. — Names  and  their  Histories.     Rivingtons,  1896. 

A  glossary  of  place-names,  selected  from  various  countries, 
with  an  introduction  and  appendices. 

C.     M  KAN  INGS  OF  WORDS. 

BRKAL,  M. — Semantics.      Heinemann,  1900. 

Practically  a  first  attempt  to  deal  with  the  science  of 
meanings  systematically.  Dr  J.  P.  Postgate  adds  some 
valuable  discussions  to  the  English  edition. 

Murray    and     Bradley.  —  The    New    English    Dictionary. 
Clarendon    Press  (in  progress). 

This  colossal  work  traces  the  history  of  every  English 
word  by  (potations  reaching  back  to  its  earliest  appearance: 
the  etymology  is  also  examined.  It  is  of  course  the  final 
court  of  appeal  in  all  matters  concerning  English  words,  no 
other  dictionary  pretending  to  cover  more  than  a  fraction  of 
the  ground  here  occupied. 

Giles,  P. — "  Philology''  (in  new  Supplement  to  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica], 

This  article  is  mentioned  here  specially  because  there  is 
so  little  literature  as  yet  dealing  with  the  general  principles 

5—2 


58  Bibliography 

of  Semantics:  it  is  however  to  be  consulted  on  most  of  the 
subjects  referred  to  in  this  little  book.  See  also  Mr  Giles's 
article,  Writing,  in  the  same  Supplement. 

D.     INDOGERMANIC  LANGUAGES. 
i .      General. 

Brugmann,  K. — Elements  of  the  Comparative  Grammar  of 
the  Indogermanic  Languages.  4  vols.  and  Index 
(a  5th  vol.).  Triibner,  1886-1897. 

This  encyclopaedic  work,  translated  by  Wright,  Convvay 
and  Rouse,  is  the  thesaurus  of  the  results  of  the  new  philo- 
logy, covering  the  phenomena  of  the  eight  main  branches 
of  the  Indogermanic  family  in  their  older  developments. 
The  first  volume,  dealing  with  phonology,  is  superseded  by 
the  new  German  edition  (1897);  the  second  part,  by 
Prof.  Delbriick,  which  treats  the  Comparative  Syntax  on 
similar  lines,  is  unfortunately  not  translated.  Prof.  Brug- 
mann has  been  described  above  (p.  13)  as  the  great  pioneer 
of  the  new  school,  and  the  learning,  clearness,  and  penetra- 
tion visible  throughout  his  work  are  extraordinary.  He  is 
now  publishing  (in  German)  an  abridgement  of  it. 

2.      Classic Y7/. 

Giles,  P.' — Manual  of  Comparative  Philology  for  Classical 
Students.  2nd  ed.  Macmillan,  1901. 

This  admirable  work,  which  has  been  translated  into 
German,  entirely  supersedes  all  previous  summaries  of  the 
history  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages.  It  includes  also 


Bibliography  5  9 

an  excellent  account  of  the  principles  of  the  science,  with 
an  application  of  these  principles  to  syntax,  a  field  which  is 
only  beginning  to  be  worked  on  the  lines  of  the  newer 
philology.  Considerable  attention  is  given  to  English. 

('lark,  J. — Manual  of  Linguistics,     Thin,  1893. 

This  book  is  much  slighter  than  Giles's,  but  has  some 
very  good  material,  and  deals  with  English  more  fully  in 
proportion. 

3.      Germanic. 

Henry,  V.  —  Comparative  Grammar  of  English  and  German. 

Sonnenschein,  1894. 

Those  whose  knowledge  is  mostly  confined  to  modern 
languages  can  study  the  principles  of  linguistics  to  excellent 
purpose  within  the  narrow  field  of  Germanic,  as  is  shown 
in  these  lectures  above.  Prof.  Henry,  of  Paris,  is  a 
thoroughly  trustworthy  writer. 

West,  A.    S. — JUements  of  English  Grammar.     Cambridge 

University  Press.     8th  edition,  1902. 
An  excellent  sketch  of  historical  .English. 

Toller,    T.    X. — Outlines    of    the    History    of    the    English 

Language.      Cambridge  University  Press.      1900. 
A  very  sound  and  readable  summary. 

Mayhew,  A.  L. — Synopsis  of  Old  English  Phonology.   Claren- 
don Press,  1891. 

An  exceedingly  compact  account  of  the  relations  be- 
tween English  sounds  and  those  corresponding  to  them  in 
cognate  languages. 


60  Bibliography 

Behaghel,  O. — Short  Historical  Grammar  of  the  German 
Language.  Translated  and  adapted  by  Dr  E. 
Trechmann.  Macmillan,  1891. 

Wright,  J. — Primer  of  the  Gothic  Language.  Clarendon 
Press,  2nd  edition,  1899. 

The  study  of  these  cognate  Germanic  dialects,  the 
second-cousin  and  the  great-aunt,  respectively,  of  modern 
English,  will  of  course  greatly  enlarge  the  understanding  of 
our  own  language. 


E.     LANGUAGE  AND  PRIMITIVE  HISTORY. 

i .      General 

Kendall,  G.    H.  —  The   Cradle  of  the.  Aryans.     Macmillan, 
1889. 

A  sound  little  resume  for  its  date,  but  very  much  has 
been  done  in  the  past  fourteen  years. 

Taylor,  I. —  The  Origin  of  the  Aryans.      Scott,  1889. 

On  a  larger  scale  than  Kendall's  essay,  this  book  is 
necessarily  more  out  of  date,  especially  on  the  linguistic 
side.  I  am  not  competent  to  criticise  its  craniology  and 
archaeology.  Canon  Taylor  did  excellent  service  by 
popularising  newer  views,  and  the  book  may  still  be  used 
with  profit  if  carefully  checked  by  later  work. 


Bibliography  6 1 

Schrader,  O.  (tr.  I)r  F.  H.  Jevons). — -Prehistoric  Antiquities 
of  the  Aryan  Peoples.  1890. 

This  important  work  has  been  superseded  by  DrSchrader's 
recent  Rca/lexikan,  a  dictionary  of  words  bearing  on  the 
culture  of  primeval  times.  The  author  is  decidedly  the 
leading  specialist  on  linguistic  palaeontology. 

There  is  also  an  excellent  account  of  the  controversy  in 
French  by  S.  Reinach:  II  Origine  des  Arycns  (Leroux,  1892). 

2.     Religions, 

Stetiding,   H.  —  Greek    and  Roman    Mythology    and   Heroic 

Legend.     (Temple  Primers.)     Dent,  1901. 
An  excellent  little  manual. 

Hopkins,  K.  W. — The  Religions  of  India.     Arnold,  1896. 
I)e    la    Saussaye,    P.    D.    C. — The  Religion  of  the  Teutons. 

Ginn,  1902. 

These  two  works,  in  Prof.  Jastrow's  "Handbooks  on  the 
History  of  Religions,"  give  admirable  accounts  of  religions 
which,  with  the  Greek,  the  Roman,  and  the  Persian,  supply 
our  main  evidence  for  deducing  the  religion  of  the  primeval 
Indogerman. 

Ridge  way,    W. —  The.    Early    Age   of   Greece.       Cambridge 
University  Press,    1901    (vol.    i.),    1903   (vol.   ii. — in 
the   press). 
This  brilliant  work,  frequently  referred  to  above,  contains 

very  important   discussions   on    the   history   of   Greek   and 

Roman   religion,  as  well  as  on  the  origin   of  their  culture. 

I  abstain  of  course  from  pronouncing  on  the  archaeologists' 

debate  of  which  this  book  is  the  centre. 


62  Bibliography 

Chadwick,  H.  M. — The  Oak  and  the  Thunder-god.     Harri- 
son, 1900. 

A  paper  presented  to  the  Anthropological  Institute, 
giving  an  excellent  account  of  the  evidence  for  the  cult 
described  on  p.  52  above.  My  lecture  was  in  print  before 
I  saw  Mr  Chadwick's  paper,  from  which  I  venture  to 
dissent  only  in  the  account  he  gives  of  the  rationale  of  the 
link  between  the  oak  and  the  thunder. 

3 .     An  th  r apology. 
Tylor,  E.  B. — Anthropology.     Macmillan,  1895. 

Frazer,   J.  G. — The  Golden  Bough.      2nd  ed.,  3  vols.,  Mac- 
millan, 1901. 

Prof.  Tylor' s  manual  has  chapters  on  Language,  and  on 
the  various  elements  of  culture  which  are  taken  up  from  the 
other  side  by  linguistic  palaeontology.  l)r  Frazer's  famous 
book  illustrates  phenomena  of  language  very  freely,  and  its 
study  of  comparative  institutions  must  be  taken  into  account 
whenever  we  examine  what  the  evidence  from  language 
proves. 


INDEX    I. 


Names  of  modem  writers  are  in  italics.     For  convenience,  the  name.* 
:if  foreign  scholars  are  given  with  initials  only. 


Ablaut — see  Vowel-gradation. 

Accent  13  f,  21,  25 

Accidental  similarities  16,  39 

Achaeans  35,  37,  48,  50,  52 

Acorns  53 

Agriculture  46  f 

Albanian  6,  52 

Analogy  23  tf 

Ancestor-worship  49  ff 

Angel,   for  ancestor  spirit  50 

Animals,  Indogermanic  42 

Anthropology  30,  62 

Archaeology  30,   35,  45  f,    53 

Armenian  6,  42,    45 

Articulation  and  inherited  speech- 
organs  21 

Aryan — set;  Indogermanic. 

Aryan  (  =  Indo-Iranian)  6  f,  37  f, 
40  IT,  45,  47 

Asia    as    Indogerman     home    38, 

45 

Assyrian   39 
Athenians  35,  48 
Athens,  St  Paul  at   53 
Avesta  51 

Babylonians  39 
Baltic  34  f,  42 
Behag/iel,  O.   60 
Blood-offerings  50 

Blood   revenge   49 
Bofp,  F.  5 


Borrowing  of  culture  words  32 
Botany  30,   41 
Bradley,  //.   57 
Brcal,  M.  57 
Brugmann,  Karl  I3f,  58 
Burning  and  burying  50 

Cambridgeshire   19 

Celt — see  Keltic. 

Cluuhvick,  H.  M.  62 

Chaucer   25 

Clan  49 

Clark,  J.    59 

Classical  philology  5,  58  f 

Colour  words   27 

Comparative  mythology   1 1  f 

,,  syntax  58  f 

Conquest,  effects  on  language  23, 

3r>-    .?» 

Conscious  phonetic  change   10 
Conway,  Prof.   20,  58 
Copper  44  f 
CinveU,  Prof,    ix  f 
Craniology  30 
Curt  ins,  Georg  I  i  f 
Cyrils   36 

Dawn-goddess   1 2 
Decimal  system   39 
Delbriick,   B.  58 
Dialect  mixture  20 
Dialects,   growth  of  22 


64 


Index  I 


Dialects  of  English   19 
Dieus  Perqunos  43,  52,  54 
Digamma   1 2 
Dirt  and  religion  52 
Dodona  52 
Druids  43 
"Dug-outs"  43 
Duodecimal  system   39 
Dutch  8 

Eastern  and  Western  Indogennans 

6,  14.  i?.  38 

Educational  value  of  Language  2 
English  Language  8,  i8ff,  25,  27, 

56  f,  59  f 
Epirus  52 
Eschatology  50 
Ethnology   30 
Etymology   i  f,   9,   34.    56  f 
Europe  as  Indogerman  home  38  ff 
European  races  34  f,  37,  53 
Exceptions  to  phonetic  law   15  f 

Fakirs  52 

"  False"  Analogy  23 

Family  life  48  f 

Fatherhood,  divine  50,  52  f 

Pick,  A.   36 

Finnish  37,   55 

Fishing  32,   43  f 

P'ive,  word  for    14 

Formal  Analogy  24 

Frazer,  Dr  J.  G.   62 

Gauls  50 

Geology  30 

German  8,    10 

Germanic   languages  and  peoples 

7.  9>  J3,  l8>  27>  34  ^  3«ff>  43  f> 
48,  50,  59  f 


Germans,  in  Linguistics  and  Eng- 
lish studies  4  f,  58 
Giles,  P.  ix,  56  ff 
Gipsies,  Indogermans  as  46 
Gold  44 

Gothic  4,   32  f,  60 
Greek  2  f,  6,  8,  12,  16,  25  f,  32  f, 

38'  45:  49 

Greek  religion  37,   49,  52  ff,  61 
Grimm,  Jacob  7 
Grimm's  Law  7  ff ,  13,  i8f 
Gutturals   14 

Hand,  name  for  33,  45 

Hearth  46 

Heaven  and  earth   50  f 

Hebrew  16 

Henry,   V.   59 

Herodotus  5  i 

High  Germans    10 

Ilirt,    H.  41 

Home  life  46 

Homer  35,  48,   52 

Homicide  49 

Hopkins,  E.   IV.   61 

Horace  20 

Horse  14,   34 

House-master  and  -mistress  46 

India,   northern    immigrants    into 

36,  49 

Indian  languages  6,  34 
Indogermanic,  the  name  7 

,,  peoples,  their  home 

34  ff 

,,  ,  eastern  and  west- 

ern 6,  14,  i  7,  38 
,,  ,  sounds  of  9.  13 

,,  .    cautions    in    re- 

constructing i4f 


Index  I 


Indogermanic  religion  49  ff 
Invariability  of  phonetic  law  15  ff 
lonians  35 
Iranian  6,   34,    36 
Isles  of  the   Blest   50 
Italic  6,    20,    34,   43,   45 

Jastrow,  M.   f\  i 
/c-rww,  Dr  F.  />'.  6  i 
Jones,  Sir  llr.  3  ff 


Lake-dwellers  43  f 
Language,  as  a  Science    i 

,,  its   educational  value  2 

,,          and  Race  38 
Latham,  Dr  R.  G.   38  f 
Latin   3  f.  6,  8,  i(i,   19,  27,  32,  38 
Law  in  Language    12,  15 
Letts  44 
Lcskicn,    A.    15 
Lightning  52 

Linguistic  Palaeontology  30  ff 
Lithuanian  6  f,  34,  42,  52 
'•  Little  Year  "  48 
Logical  Analog}'   24 
"  Long  hundred  ''   39 
Loss  of  old   words   32,  43  ff 
Lutz,  F.    57 
Lunar  year  47 
Lystra,   St    Paul  at    53 

MacAdam   26 
Manes  (Lat.)   49 
Marriage  49 
Material   Analogy   24 
Matriarchate  48 
May  hew,  A.  L.    59 


Media  37 

Mediterranean  race  35,  38,  48  ff 

Metals   44  f 

Milton    28 

Mitllc-r,  Prof.  Max  9,  r  i 

Murray,   Dr  J.  A.  II.  57 

Nature-worship  50 

Neogrammarians  viii,  15,  58 

Neolithic  culture  45 

Nomadic  life  46 

Norse  8,  52 

North  European  Race  35,  37  f,  48  ff 

Numerals  33,  39 

Oak-tree  and  thunder  41,  52,  62 
Ocrt.'l,  If.   56 
One,   word  for  33 
Ossetes  36 

Pastoral  life  46 

Patricians  at   Rome  36,  49 

Paul,   H.  55 

Paul,   St  53 

Pcile,  Dr  J.   v,  viii  f 

Pelasgians   35,  38 

Persians  36,   50  ff,   6r 

Phonetic  change,  unconscious  10  f 

Plough  47 

Poseidon   37,  52 

I\>st!fate,  DrJ.  P.  57 

Primitive   Indogerman    home     ^4, 

38  ff 

,,  ,,  religion  37, 

49  ff,  rt,f 

,,  ,,  animals  42 

,,  ,,  metals  44  f 

Psychology  in  Language  2,  28 

Purchase  of  wife  49 

Race  and  Language  38 


66 


Index  I 


Races  of  Europe  34  f,  37,  53 
Rapidity  of  utterance  20  f 
Reinach,   S.  61 
Relationship  words  48 
Religion  of  Indogermans  49  ff 
Kendall,  Dr  G.  PL  60 
Ridgeivay,  Prof,  vii,  35  ff,  39,  43, 

48  f,   52,   61 

Roman  ancestor-worship  49 
Romance  languages  6 
Rouse,  Dr  W.  H.  D.  58 

Sabine  20,  36 

Sanskrit  3,  6,  17,  40,  44 

Saussaye,  P.  D.  C.  de  la  61 

Sihlciiher,  August  I3ff 

Schmidt,  Johannes  39,  45 

Schrader,  0.  53.  61 

Sea  41 

Semantics  33,   41,    57  f 

Semites  45 

Sexagesimal  system  39 

Silver  45 

Simplification  of  language  28 

Sixty  39 

Skeat,   Prof.   19,   56 

Sky  and  Oak  52,  62 

Slavonic  6,   34,  42,   44 

Sonant  liquids  and  nasals   13,   21 

Sound-shifting  10,  18 

Speech-mixture  23 

Spirits  49,   51,   53 

"Sporadic"  change   12 

Spring  40.   47 

Steppes,   migration  over  44,   47 

^tending,   H.   6 1 

Stone  Age  44 

Strong,  Logeman  and  Wheeler  55 

Strong  perfect,  English  and  Greek 

25 
Sweet,  Dr  H.  37,  55 


Syntax  58  f 

Tacitus   48 

Taylor,  Dr  I.   57,  60 
Thera  50 

Thunder-god  41,  52,  62 
Toller,  Prof.  59 
Trechmann,  Dr  60 
Trees,  argument  from  40  f 
Tree-names  27,  33,  40  f 
Twelfth  Night  48 
Tylor,  Prof.  62 

Ulfilas— see  Wulfila. 
Umbrian   33 

Yedic  Sanskrit  6,    13,   51  f 

Yerner's   Law    13 

Vocabulary    of    primitive    speech 

3i  ff 

Vowel-gradation  24  f 
Vowels,   Indogermanic  13 

Wergild   49 

Wesley   28 

West,  A.  S.   59 

Whitney,   W.  D.  56 

Winter  40 

Women,  condition  of  48 

Wright,  Prof.    58,  60 

Writing  58 

Wulfila  33 

Year,  length  of  47 

Zend  40 
Zeus  37,  50  ff 

„     of  the  Oak  43,   54 
Zoology  30 
Zoroaster  5  t 
Zulus   2i 


hNDEX  II. 


In  this  word-index   the  words   in  italics  are  those  quoted  as  reprt 
senting  Tndogermanic  originals. 

accent   21  daughter  32,   34,   48 

Achilles  (dr.)   36  deism    16 

Agilulfs  (old  Ger. )   36  despot  46 

ai  (Fr.)   25  dcits  (Lat.)    16,  51 

aime   (Fr.)    25  Digentia   (Lat.)   20 

alnus  (I. at.)  27  ttirimts  (Lat.)   51 

amo  (Lat.)   25  dog  32 

Aurora  (Lat.)   3  downs  (Lat.)  46 

avons  (Fr.)   25  dough    18 

drownded    28 
Dvaus  (Skt.)  50  f 

ear  47 
Faster  3 
either   27 
eleven   39 
ty?<w  (Lat.)  34 
Frin   (Ir.)   7 
-etum  (Lat.)   27 


feet   25,   28 
female    27 

fir  4i 

call  8  fish   32,   43 

cook  46  fire    14,    27 

corn   46  flavos   (Lat.)    27 

cover    i 6  Hay   39 

cow  46  ><?/   25,    33 


68  Index  II 

four  27  macadamise  16 

frater  (Lat.)   8  male   27 

fraxinus  (Lat.)   41  mare  (Lat.)   41 

mead  42 

Cast  (Ger.)    17  Medise  26 

Gerste  (Ger.)  46  »/«-«  41  f 

£7^.r/   17  w/7/  47 

month  47 

health  27  TW//W  32  f,   4S 
helvos  (Lat.)   27 

hiemf>s  (Lat.)   40  neither  27 

///wtf(laya)   (Skt.)  40  nescius  (Lat.)   3 

hither  27  nice  3 

hard  (Gr.)  47  niclit  (Ger.)    14 

hound  32  north,    northern   27 
hundred  33 

odor  (Lat.)    19 

ia.sc  (Ir.)  43  oI5a,   o'iSafJ.fv  (Gr.)   25 

zV*  40  olere   (Lat.)   19  f 

ingens  (Lat.)   3  onto(logy)  3 

iron  44  oven   46 

-ise   26 

.  .  ,„      n  paraholo  (Lat.)  2=; 

isi  (Zend)  40 

ir-    \  paracus  (Skt. )   39 

tff/j.ei>  ((^r.)   25  ,          ,1-    \ 

.  parole,  parlons  (Fr.)   25 
-ize,   see  -ise 

parncMti   49 

7^  (Lat.)   50  A^''  49 

TrAe/c^s  (Gr.)   39 

KaX£  (Gr.)  9  perhaps,  p'raps   20 

kapliar  (Ilcb.)    16  Perqunos  (In<loR.)   52 

knave  3  pfund   (Ger-)    '9 

(frparrip  (Gr.)   8 

larch    19  pilaqqu   (Assyr.)   39 

larix   (Lat.)    19  pinus   (Lat.)   27 

lender  (M.  L.)    25  jiiscis  (Lat.)   43 

Licenza  (Ital.)   20  j>lecto   (Lat.)   39 

lingua   19  f  plough    18 

loaf  47  pondus  (Lat.)    19 

loch   14  praedico  (Lat.)    19 

long  25  preach    19,    24 

Lough    1 8  predige  (Ger.)   19 


Index  II  69 

(pre)scnt  3  taught  28 

teached   24 

(jnercus  (Lat.)    41  tear   26 

<jnei-n  47  theism    16 

0eos  (Or.)    10",  51,  53 

raught   24,    28  thither   27 

reach    24  timber  46 

m/  44  tongue    19 

right    20  tore   26 

righteous  20  /ra;  20,    33,   41 

right-you-are   20  T"ues(day)   50  f 

twelve   39 

sang    25,    27  f  two  33 

scrope   26  uncouth   3 

sew  47 

silly   3  venous  (Fr.)   25 

sister  32   48  7'er  (Lat.)   40 

sit   25,    27  viens  (Fr. )   25 

stiinu  40 

-snus  (Lat.)   27  wagon  46 

.sv«  32,    48  -warm    17 

sooth  3  weal,   wealth  27 

sore    24  wear   26 

sorrow   24  weave  47 

sorry    :4  uvd  49 

sounded   28  widow  49 

south,  southern  27  wit,   witen   25 

sow  47  wore   26 

.r/tvr  46  -wos  (Lat.  and   Prim.   Ger.)   27 

Strasse   (Ger.)    19  wot    25 

strata  (Lat.)    18  writ,   wrote   25 

street    19 

sung   25,    27  f  _ymr  47 

suppose,  s'pose   20  yellow   27,   44 

suttee  (Skt.)   3 

Zeus  (Gr.)   50  f 

/«/•  41  '/.immer  (Ger.)  46 


CA.MBKIlJC.I-::     I'KINTKI)    BY    J.     AND    C.     F.     CLAY,     AT    THE    UNIVERSITY    i'KESS 


A    001  428153    9 


